A.C.
Gentry Jr.
Cotton Gin at
Frankston, Texas
Watercolor
$150.00
14 x 18”
Question: How do you
see all of Texas for free and have it make a personal impression on your
well-being and childhood upbringing?
Answer: Ride around
with your father and uncle who are Civil Highway Engineers.
That’s
exactly what a young A. C. Gentry Jr. did.
At five years old he started to tour
the rural back roads of Texas, seeing barn after barn, farmlands to ranch
hands, self-built houses to bootleg shacks.
In the process, he began to draw and sketch these moments, these
memories, and these nostalgic recollections.
He saw Texas being built up to become the metropolis it is today, one
road and one highway at a time; continuing to explore the back roads of Texas
as an adult gaining insight and understanding of the unique people and lands of
this great state.
Born
in Tyler, Texas 1927, Gentry’s artwork spans over five decades. A life’s worth
of art that delivers picturesque and historical imagery that recalls the times
long forgotten.
Houses, barns, and
landscape capture sentimental scenes of outdated but, longed-for Lone Star
living.
In
its curatorial exhibition summary the Tyler Museum of Art’s One Man exhibition
for A.C. Gentry titled, The Past is Present: Watercolors by A.C. Gentry, said,” his sketches and
paintings record what resonates within us and preserves our memories as if they
were before our eyes. He can tell you where they are – or where they were –
when he made them a part of his life's work. And the past comes rushing back to
us poignantly and real in the present.”
Cotton Gin
at Frankston, TX is a watercolor painting that looks to be painted plein aire in
the quaint backdrop of Frankston, Texas.
Deep and shallow shadows, wispy vegetation, and large swaths of color
washes capture a rusted metal roofed building; a two-story gin house.
We
see the rutted dirt road that circles up to the front, wheel grooves from horse
drawn carts weighed down with the 400-500 lb. cotton bales that would make
their way to the Galveston or Velesco port to be shipped to textile mills in
New England and Great Britain.
Dry
patches of undergrowth linger along the xeroscape landscape, desert vegetation
of East Texas -- windblown and sun scorched.
Awash
with earth tones, Gentry adds color with browns and darker greens; the blues
are faded, perfect for the nostalgic qualities of his iconic Texas subjects.
A
tall pole on the left of the composition leads us into the angled depictions of
a one point perspective. Roof lines and pitched eves guide us down the row of
utilitarian structures.
Is
it now dilapidated, ransacked, or bulldozed? No one knows for sure as the East
Texas landscapes fall to the ever sprawling cities, gobbling up rural as urban
expands.
But
we know for sure that this Gin House is now forever depicted in Gentry’s
painting; fearing neither eminent domain nor urban gentrification.
©Gabriel Diego Delgado/ JR Mooney Galleries
To purchase please call 210.828.8214
No comments:
Post a Comment
Note: Only a member of this blog may post a comment.