Twilight at Donnelly’s #1
Oil on panel
Plein air
4.5×12″
©2013 Lucinda Howe

When I was child growing up in a small town in North Carolina, our house was hot in the summer evenings in spite of big fans in all the windows.  We’d go next door to my grandparents house and sit in the rocking lawn chairs under the big pecan tree telling stories and memorizing state capitals as the twilight deepened.

If my sister and I were patient enough, and didn’t make too much of a mess squirting scuppernongs at each other, Daddy would eventually say, “Let’s go to the Dairy Queen!” By the time rode to town in the old Chevy and had our small cones of vanilla and chocolate, the house was cool enough that we could sleep.

When I was painting in the Adirondacks in June, I found out soft ice cream in the summer was not just a southern thing.  One evening our agenda contained a nocturnal paintout near Donnelly’s Ice Cream, home of old fashioned soft ice cream for 60 years.  The ice cream was even better than I remember the Dairy Queen being, and it brought back lots of memories.

After scouting a location and deciding that a recently mowed field was too buggy, I set up in a parking area beside the road. When I started painting around 8:00 p.m. the moon was already up. The light was changing so fast that I decided to divide my board into two 4.5×12″ horizontals and to catch the change in light as the sun set rather than being tempted to continue working on the first one and mess it up. I finished in the dark around 9:30.

As usual these small pieces are not masterpieces, but they are great practice in simplifying shapes and working quickly, and they allow me to carry the joy of ice cream at twilight into later studio work.

Twilight at Donnelly’s #2
Oil on panel
Plein air
4.5×12″
©2013 Lucinda Howe