Evening Lamplight

Evening lamplight

EVENING LAMPLIGHT

This study done from an old back-and-white photograph celebrates the cozy warmth of evenings with my grandfather at the old family farmstead.  He lived without electricity or running water.  He could have afforded the conveniences, but thought the electrical cooperative charged too much to provide electricity, and he really didn’t need it all that badly anyway.  The house was wired after-the-fact, with a power line running out to a Kohler generator motor out in the garage.   Every now and then he would decide to watch the evening news on a small television set, on which the volume would have to be turned up quite loud to be heard over the generator motor that roared its exhaust through a straight pipe sticking out of a side wall of the garage.  I remember the snowy image from the distant TV station dimming and brightening with the electric lights in the house.