I’ve been working recently on some very small pieces for the upcoming Little Gems show at the West End Gallery in Corning. I’ve mentioned here before that this particular show is always a sentimental favorite of mine as it was in this show that I first publicly showed my work twenty years ago. It represents the first step on to the path that I now follow and that makes it special for me. Plus I enjoy working in the smaller scale for a bit. It allows for easily easing back into older themes and forward into newer ones.
One of these pieces that just finished yesterday is shown here at the top. It’s a 4″ by 6″ painting that I call Storms Are on the Ocean. I haven’t done a boat painting in some time and thought the smaller format would be the perfect opportunity to re-visit the theme. I am always drawn to the motion in these pieces and the billow of the sail. It reminds me of a fable or a dream in some way that I find appealing.
I thought this would be the perfect match for this week’s Sunday morning music which is the song after which this painting is titled. It’s The Storms Are on the Ocean, a song first done by the legendary Carter Family back in the late 20’s. This version is from June Carter Cash‘s last album, Wildwood Flower, which was released in the year, 2003, after her death. Like the final recordings of her husband, the great Johnny Cash, this album shows her in a fragile state of health which adds greatly to the emotional impact of the songs.
It definitely comes through on this lovely song with its haunting chorus:
The storms are on the ocean
The heavens may cease to be
This world may lose its motion, love
If I prove false to thee
Enjoy and have a great Sunday.
Redtree Times 
Here’s a little story about the intersection of art and life. Every weekend, I start my day with the AM radio hunting and fishing show. Every sort of character calls in, and this there was a call from “Granny.” She riffed on a weather conversation by telling the story of moving to West Texas, and experiencing dust storms for the first time.
As she told it, one day she hung her laundry out, including the pretty white bedsheets. The dust storm came, and for the rest of their natural life the sheets were a pale shade of pink.
When I opened your post and saw the painting, of course I thought, “One Sheet to the Wind.”
Happy Sunday!
Maybe this is where Granny’s dust-stained sheet end up after one of those wind storms. Thanks, Linda!
This brings back memories. Pulling from my Kentucky roots, my mother introduced me to the Carter Family when I was little. She knew their music long before Johnny Cash became a household name. Wonderful song sung by a sweet lady.
I love watching old episodes from the Grand Ol’ Opry in the early 50’s when June Carter was the clown queen of the stage there.
This is one of those songs that came west with the landless and disenfranchised colonists from Ireland, Scotland and England, and has permeated through the Appalachians like water through limestone. It’s been bubbling through that wellspring a long time and speaks to that same ear that hears the delta blues and the rest of the music made by people who work hard just to scrabble a living. It remind me of the stories of Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings. Although they take place in the backwoods of central Florida, they have that same quality that fills the “hollers” of rural Kentucky and Tennessee. This music is as true and valid an American musical tradition as jazz and blues and I hate to see it put down as “crude” and “unsophisticated” because it is anything but. There have been a host of tremendously talented musicians to have come out of Appalachia, June Carter among them.
Yes, they are anything but crude and unsophisticated. There is a simplicity but sometimes simple can be very sophisticated and elegant which is how I see much of this music
My mother played this song for us kids with both guitar and autoharp in the style of Maybelle Carter…I have sang this song hundreds of times myself with my guitar. Always a favorite!
One of my favorites, to be sure.