Country Road....

My father loved to drive!  He would purposely find reasons, I'm sure, to get out on the back roads and meander along trails which were travelled only by farmers and hunters.  We children would watch for prairie chicken sitting on fallen logs if he had his 22 along.  Once we ended up at a lake where hunters were aiming their shotguns at geese and ducks.  I took one shot with the shotgun and never again!  It almost knocked me over.  Sunday drives were common in my younger years and weekends camping at the lake were frequent in the summer.  The year I graduated high school my parents decided we would go on a road trip through southern Saskatchewan.  I am certain we stopped at every small, medium and large museum - resulting in my lack of enthusiasm for these places to this day... More exciting was the wind and rain storm which almost pushed our huge International Travel-all off the road til we found shelter by an old garage in a roadside town.

Accompanying these travels was my father's ever present whistle.  The tune never changed.  I asked him what the tune was but he just shrugged.  Many years later I asked my mom the name of the tune. Her answer, "Over the Hills and Far Away" - I'm not even sure such a song exists but it certainly fit the situation.

Yesterday I painted this picture, and while I have simplified the name of it, the idea is there.  It is of a hill on the road I now travel to visit my mom, but it could be any one of such similar hills in the parklands of Saskatchewan.  This is a small painting 10 x 10 " but I hope that some day I can paint a road with many hills and a road reaching into the distance and name it after my father's song.