Sunrise Dairy

Sunrise Dairy

24" x 30"

Oil on hardwood Panel

[click on the image to enlarge]

Whiting Sunrise Dairy in Lewiston, Utah is the place that I remember most often when I consider my childhood, although it was really mostly my teenage years.

The best place to raise the 5 Whiting kids.

Like homes a working farm is a place that is always changing. The crops are planted, grow and are harvested and stored. The animals need attention, feeding and the cows are milked twice daily. Similarly the buildings and landscaping change over time. So some choices had to be made when considering this painting.

Many buildings including the home, the small garage, the large red barn and the milk annex no longer exist, except in our memories. And everything could not be included so the solid, wood grainery, the corn pit, the calf sheds, the pig pens and most of the equipment are not visible. The canal, irrigation ditches and sprinkler pipes and manicured fields of corn, barley, alfalfa and wheat are behind this scene.

Some things are constant such as dairy cows, feed for them, a large garden and chores.

I wanted the sunrise aspect to be dominant and the sunrise within the painting, so it was necessary to make some adjustments and thus to allow the dairy to face west for this purpose. This also nicely puts some more interesting mountains behind the buildings.

This was another fun painting to work on. Every building and item has some memories attached to it. For example the brick chimney was shaken during the Richmond earthquake and fell off the house going behind the bedroom. We are fortunate that the individual bricks rolled down the roof rather than crashing as a large mass into the home.

The red barn had two parallel rows of stalls to milk cows behind the sliding door- one row to the right and one to the left. The leanto annex on the left side was used to store supplies the one on the right side had shop tools. The barn had a full floor above the milk area and was used to store bales. Also had a few bats up in the rafters.

The painting is worked mostly in grey hues with accents. It is a larger painting than the previous two landscapes.

I hope you also noted that though it is early morning and the house and general area is quiet, the lights are on in the milk annex as dad goes about the first morning chores. The last chores of the day will be about 14-15 hours later.

Because of the greys and the limited palette this painting is very subject to ambient lighting. In some limited light it appears to be first dawn as night starts to wane. With more light flooding the central portion it becomes a brighter sunrise.

I love these memories of home.