Existential Angst at Amish Farm

john

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During a family trip to Pennsylvania we did a tour of Amish country. Absolutely fascinating, and beautiful. Mules towing carts filled with tobacco. Ten year old Mennonite children turning over the soil with gas powered roto tillers, barefoot. Feeling the earth is important to them. The Mennonites embrace just a little more modern machinery than the Amish do. Blew my mind. People really live like this. No TV. No internet. No A/C. No electric lighting.

To get around the roads the Amish use push scooters.

Bicycles used to be an expensive means of transportation in the 1800s. For reference, when the bicycle was released in 1878, it cost $125, according to the International Bicycle Fund.

That would set the average person back around $3,355 in today's dollars, according to an inflation calculator.

And, for rural back roads, bicycles aren't incredibly useful; the roads weren't paved enough to ensure a steady ride.

Amish churches decided that they were impractical, so they weren't integrated into day-to-day practices, according to Steve Nolt, professor of History and Anabaptist studies at Elizabethtown College.

"As in many societies, once a precedent is established, it’s resistant to change," said Nolt in an email with LNP | LancasterOnline.

As roads improved, scooters became a readily accepted form of transportation, said Nolt.

"By that time, bicycles were simply not part of the Amish symbolic world, and scooters filled that role, both practically and symbolically," Nolt said.

Other Amish communities in the United States may end up using bikes or scooters, or neither. But, at least for the time being, be prepared to see Amish folk using scooters on the sidewalks.


So during the tour, from inside the tour van, I got a photo of an Amish woman with a scooter unloading a bag. Later, after blowing it up I noticed that there was also a cat in the photo. It amazed me that I caught this intimate look at Amish life.

I decided to do an oil painting of it. I was new to oils, having been a watercolor painter. I initially tried to just copy the photo but it just looked bad. Gradually things like composition and color and visual interest dawned on me. So after six years and multiple revisions the only thing that remained was the woman and her scooter and the cat. The building was there but it's exterior completely changed.

And then it was put in the basement. Still not right. Overdone with awkward high walls on the house and overwrought dramatic stormy sky. An ugly unartful mess. A taunting failure.

I've recently wanted to get painting again. More seriously now that I have time due to partial retirement. But all these half-finished paintings of mine were bugging me. Especially this one as it seemed to have so much promise and I put so much time into it. Yesterday I decided to finish it dammit, and that the painting needed cropping, among other things.

Luckily I have a radial arm saw. This makes cropping paintings on panel easy to do, and very very final. After gathering my nerve I cut about half of it off. Yikes. Then I made some more revisions.

So some six years and many layers of paint later it ended up like this. I can let it go now and move on. It has released me back into the wilds of painting other new stuff that will humble me.

Sorry about the long post but to just post the image without the story didn't seem right.

7x8 1/2 inch oil on panel

1641158872525.png
 
So that post didn't get even longer ........

after I did the painting I came up with a story/poem for it....



Existential Angst at Amish Farm

The Butterfly

"Flutter Flutter Fly
Why do I even try"

The Cat

"Right paw. Left paw. Pause.
Extend retract the claws.
Should I pounce upon it now
or wait for higher cause."

The Women

"This world gawks at me from air conditioned vans.
But safe now I am home. God help these tired hands"

The Horse

"In yonder field my love I see.
A fence between us stands.
One day that fence will fall apart and I will gallop free."
 
What wonders will you unleash when you're fully retired, John? This is a lovely painting! Lots of pretty details, and adding the poetry is a tender touch. ❤ I love it, and I appreciate the back story. It's always interesting to read about what gets us *there,* so thank you!

I'm glad you didn't let this one go. :) Good work!
 
So wonderful John!

My father was from PA and had a Mennonite background. There's a long history as to when they broke from the Amish and decided to be a little more "progressive." But not by much. My dad was a very simple person and didn't "believe" in higher education, and this kind of thing. Lots of other kind of "backwards" thinking, yet some of the principals were humble and gave me certain kind of (good) values in my core character, I think. Interesting stuff.
 
What wonders will you unleash when you're fully retired, John? This is a lovely painting! Lots of pretty details, and adding the poetry is a tender touch. ❤ I love it, and I appreciate the back story. It's always interesting to read about what gets us *there,* so thank you!

I'm glad you didn't let this one go. :) Good work!

Thanks Terri. Glad you enjoyed it. I don't know about wonders but I just hope I can pare down the time spent on a 7x8.5 inch painting to less than six years :)

And actually I'm still working on it because I noticed after posting that her head covering was too yellow so I took some out. Photos of small paintings aren't fair.

Now I'm done for sure, I think. :)
 
So wonderful John!

My father was from PA and had a Mennonite background. There's a long history as to when they broke from the Amish and decided to be a little more "progressive." But not by much. My dad was a very simple person and didn't "believe" in higher education, and this kind of thing. Lots of other kind of "backwards" thinking, yet some of the principals were humble and gave me certain kind of (good) values in my core character, I think. Interesting stuff.


Wow, Ayin, that's quite a coincidence! Yes, what is "progressive" or "backwards". How do we define those things. How many people still feel the earth under their bare feet. What is that worth. I bet they have a small carbon footprint. We just can't expect them to do things like advance medical science or create labor saving technology and stuff like that. :)
 
It's a beautiful painting. I loved reading the story behind it too, so thank you for sharing. :)
 
Your poetry is as beautiful as your painting, John! Thanks for sharing the story behind your work; it helps to put it all in perspective. There is a community of Mennonites in central NY where I recently lived and they did some work on our house and barn. They showed up sober (unlike others), worked hard and never left a speck of trash behind. Plus, there was not a constant barrage of foul language to endure. I would love to have them as neighbors.
 
Love the painting, the article and the poem. ❤️❤️

Thank you sno. Or is it Margaret? :)

Glad you liked the poem also. I used to write a bunch of it, privately, but public poetry can be cringy. :)
 
Your poetry is as beautiful as your painting, John! Thanks for sharing the story behind your work; it helps to put it all in perspective. There is a community of Mennonites in central NY where I recently lived and they did some work on our house and barn. They showed up sober (unlike others), worked hard and never left a speck of trash behind. Plus, there was not a constant barrage of foul language to endure. I would love to have them as neighbors.

Thanks Donna.

I thought the story might help if only because most people haven't seen those scooters and it might not be clear what it is. Like I just did a bad rendering of a bicycle or something.

Yeah you don't hear about Mennonite gangs. Maybe barn raising ones.
 
During a family trip to Pennsylvania we did a tour of Amish country. Absolutely fascinating, and beautiful. Mules towing carts filled with tobacco. Ten year old Mennonite children turning over the soil with gas powered roto tillers, barefoot. Feeling the earth is important to them. The Mennonites embrace just a little more modern machinery than the Amish do. Blew my mind. People really live like this. No TV. No internet. No A/C. No electric lighting.

To get around the roads the Amish use push scooters.

Bicycles used to be an expensive means of transportation in the 1800s. For reference, when the bicycle was released in 1878, it cost $125, according to the International Bicycle Fund.

That would set the average person back around $3,355 in today's dollars, according to an inflation calculator.

And, for rural back roads, bicycles aren't incredibly useful; the roads weren't paved enough to ensure a steady ride.

Amish churches decided that they were impractical, so they weren't integrated into day-to-day practices, according to Steve Nolt, professor of History and Anabaptist studies at Elizabethtown College.

"As in many societies, once a precedent is established, it’s resistant to change," said Nolt in an email with LNP | LancasterOnline.

As roads improved, scooters became a readily accepted form of transportation, said Nolt.

"By that time, bicycles were simply not part of the Amish symbolic world, and scooters filled that role, both practically and symbolically," Nolt said.

Other Amish communities in the United States may end up using bikes or scooters, or neither. But, at least for the time being, be prepared to see Amish folk using scooters on the sidewalks.


So during the tour, from inside the tour van, I got a photo of an Amish woman with a scooter unloading a bag. Later, after blowing it up I noticed that there was also a cat in the photo. It amazed me that I caught this intimate look at Amish life.

I decided to do an oil painting of it. I was new to oils, having been a watercolor painter. I initially tried to just copy the photo but it just looked bad. Gradually things like composition and color and visual interest dawned on me. So after six years and multiple revisions the only thing that remained was the woman and her scooter and the cat. The building was there but it's exterior completely changed.

And then it was put in the basement. Still not right. Overdone with awkward high walls on the house and overwrought dramatic stormy sky. An ugly unartful mess. A taunting failure.

I've recently wanted to get painting again. More seriously now that I have time due to partial retirement. But all these half-finished paintings of mine were bugging me. Especially this one as it seemed to have so much promise and I put so much time into it. Yesterday I decided to finish it dammit, and that the painting needed cropping, among other things.

Luckily I have a radial arm saw. This makes cropping paintings on panel easy to do, and very very final. After gathering my nerve I cut about half of it off. Yikes. Then I made some more revisions.

So some six years and many layers of paint later it ended up like this. I can let it go now and move on. It has released me back into the wilds of painting other new stuff that will humble me.

Sorry about the long post but to just post the image without the story didn't seem right.

7x8 1/2 inch oil on panel

View attachment 16433
What a great experience
 
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