“November Marsh”
Pencil and pastel pencils.
2023
$200 (please email dterrydraw or private message if interested in purchase)
The subject of this small painting is David Goddard, of Greeneville, TN (where my family is from; thirty miles south of here. His father was the much-beloved scoutmaster to my basically-fatherless father, in the early and mid 1950’s.. His mother, a nurse, delivered both me and my older brother and stood godmother to the first one (I, later, got the exotic, Natalie-Wood-Look-alike one from Haiti). He was a great comfort to my mother this past year, at my father’s memorial service.
Yes, I know…..yet another “David” in my family….including one uncle, a cousin, two other uncles, my paternal great-grandfather, and even my paternal grandmother (“David Mae Fudge”). You would think, with the money they’ve made since 1900 or so, somebody would have been able to afford a couple more first-names….but, no.
As for the larger subject? This is what a lot of these boys do in the Fall……go tromping in the early hours through chilly mud and water to kill birds. I won’t bother, in this small venue, to explain the Romance of All This to non-hunters who are not from the Upper-South.
Suffice it to say that this is just one of those guy-things. I’ve never heard of a wife or girlfriend who wanted to tag along.
I don’t hunt, and I haven’t shot a gun for decades (at which time, I inherited an astonishing number of them, that I later sold). I still love this picture; I have no problem painting folks/milieus that I don;’t pretend to understand. One thing I do know is that, in co-existence with the commonly-known “Female Mystique”, there’s a Male Mystique that isn’t at all “toxic” or any of that bullshit. This picture of David Goddard reminds me of many wonderful times.
