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A rural farm scene near Bennettsville, South Carolina. For all the world the downed power line, the emptiness and isolation of this abandoned sharecropper’s house in the middle of what was once a vast peanut farm appeared to signal that a family had gone to the ground and lineages never to be known.

My realist acrylic painting draws upon influences that evolved from my early childhood, when my self-taught painter father familiarized me with drawing and painting fundamentals. My own work began after decades of deferring to practical priorities in other aspects of my creative life as a graphic designer and architectural photographer sole practitioner. I could no more have done those with other artists as I could make a painting as part of a team. I eventually discovered the extravagant indulgence of rendering with plentiful detail the fleeting reality of a thought, or a glance out a window, or a roadside scene. In their own moment of life they each might have been forgotten, not fully grasped, or easily driven past unnoticed. What we...