One of the most comforting and enduring reminders of my childhood growing up in a small town is the clock tower of the Crook County Courthouse. I remember feeling lucky that I could see the clock tower from the playground when I was in kindergarten. Growing up we watched parades from the lawn in front of the courthouse, and we watched the tree lighting at the courthouse at Christmas, and I had my first art show in the courthouse lobby. The historic courthouse, Prineville’s tallest and most ornate building, has become a symbol of the town and the pride of the community. I’ve used the courthouse as a subject for several paintings in the past, and my plan is to paint several more showing the courthouse at different historic time periods.
This comparison of the contemporary photo of the courthouse with the historic photo from the 1960s shows how much the trees have grown up and partly obscured the building. For the painting I chose to show the courthouse as it appeared in the early 1960s because there were fewer trees and I wanted to the highlight the monumental architecture of the building.
I used this cardboard model to photograph a collection of miniature cars for the parking lot in the background of the courthouse. I worked out the building in the painting from a series of photos I had taken of the courthouse and from a collection of historic photographs. I only needed the model to photograph the cars so the building in the model is left very simplified in order to save time. My mom and Angela helped me by holding up a sheet for a background.
This was my first courthouse drawing I drew way back in 1987 when I was four. I’ve been thinking about the courthouse for a long time now and it’s been an ongoing source of inspiration for me.
