Now that I am home I want to tell you more about my adventure at Stringtown Rising Farm in West Virginia. The farm is the home to Suzanne McMinn of Chickens in the Road. For years I have followed her blog and loved her writings and photos of her life on her farm.
I even contacted her a couple of years ago about permission to use her photos of her animals as the reference material for a Farm Animal series I painted. And she graciously said yes.
When Suzanne reached out for someone to come and paint a wall for her in her newly redesigned basement I jumped at the chance to see the farm for myself.
Upon arrival Saturday afternoon we were greeted by the welcoming committee.
My friend, Linda K., went with me. She’s a great painter and was a huge help to me in completing this project in a short time. The welcoming committee loved her.
And she loved them. 
Especially Glory Bee, the giant calf!
We had to get oriented so the first thing we did was to take tons of photos of the animals to use for reference.
Besides the goats and cows, there are sheep. This is Crazy and Baby Crazy.
And of course, there are lots of chickens running around. And some are even penned up. These I think are named “Future Lunch and Dinner”!
And there is Goose who is sentenced to the chicken pen because his siblings disappeared while roaming free so he is safer here.
But if I had to choose my favorite (besides the dogs, of course) it would have to be the two baby goats, Peanut and Coal. Luckily, they are sold already or I may have had to have one of them. They were just adorable.
There are many more photos of animals…I took about three hundred in two days, and I will share more in the coming days and I’m sure I will paint many of them. After gathering material we took a look at the space and started talking about what we should paint. Over the next couple of posts I will chronicle our process. Please stay tuned.
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For about 2 1/2 hours yesterday morning and again yesterday afternoon, we had the pleasure of working at the Blue Ridge Arts Council with 13 terrific young artists from Warren County Middle School. 
The Studio 