I showed Peggy Snow this long-ago work by my paternal grandmother, Mary Banks. |
In her outdoor studio, Snow is dressed for the January cold: blue scarf, brown vest, heavy coat and a tan fedora former Dallas Cowboys coach Tom Landry surely would have appreciated.
Snow and I share a mutual appreciation — a love, actually — for the past. And for impressionist painting, too. Claude Monet and Vincent Van Gogh are among her favorite artists. My favorite is my paternal grandmother, so I show her an image on my iPhone of an outdoor scene painted long ago by Mary Banks.
The antebellum Primm farmhouse in Brentwood, Tenn. |
These two slave cabins -- included in Peggy Snow's painting -- will be saved from the wrecking ball. |
Born in Nashville and schooled as an artist in Memphis, Snow is drawn to old structures — decrepit barns, crumbling brick buildings, anything distinctive and set for a wrecking ball. For decades, she has "chased things that were about to disappear." The Primm farmhouse meets her criteria.
A close-up of Peggy Snow's work in progress. |
When Snow read about the farmhouse's probable demise, her heart jumped. "I'm not ready." she tells me, "for it to be taken down." And so she scouted out painting positions on public property near the farm, finally settling on a spot near a white fence.
We glance toward her subject matter — the red-roofed farm house under a deep-blue sky, the slave cabins and another old outbuilding. Then our attention turns to a leafless oak in the side yard.
“I never get tired of conveying that beauty,” she says of the massive tree.
Typically between 2 and 3 p.m. Snow sets up her easel and creates until dark. Somehow she blots out the whoosh of traffic.
"It's easy to focus once I get to this spot," she says. "There's nothing else to do but draw." Snow has weeks to go before her creation — which she aims to sell — is finished.
"I want to be as good as Monet and Van Gogh," Snow says. "I think I can be. It's my drive, my challenge."
Before I leave, I mention another Peggy — my mom, the sweetest lady on our block in Mount Lebanon, Pa. She died in 2018.
"Oh, I miss my mom, too," Snow says.
And so we part while the sun hangs low in the winter sky. We each have a foot planted in the present, but another firmly rooted in the past.
Thanks John, Peggy is a fantastic artist. I'm so glad you took time to interview her! I love her work as well, that coming from a woman raised in Oakmont PA to Nashville.
ReplyDeletePeggy is a gem. JB
DeleteVery good, comprehensive article. Well done.
ReplyDeleteI would not paint — a picture —
ReplyDeleteI'd rather be the One
It's bright impossibility
To dwell — delicious — on —
And wonder how the fingers feel
Whose rare — celestial — stir —
Evokes so sweet a torment —
Such sumptuous — Despair —
Emily Dickinson (J#505)
Didi is so Proud of her Most Talented Gogo!
Love this. John Banks
Delete