How time can change our perspectives

Change may be slow. But eventually you'll see how far you've come.

One of the things I do in all my “spare” time is sort through the digital copies of my dad’s paintings. My goal is to build an archive of as many of his images as I can possibly obtain—just because. (Because I love them, because someone should preserve as much of dad’s work as possible, because he painted thousands of paintings and we’ve probably not seem them all, because it fascinates me as an artist.)

Every once in a while, I find paintings of the same exact scene. You wouldn’t think that would be a surprise, maybe, because Dad painted rural landscapes—barns, trees, creeks, flowers, fences—and of course it makes sense that in, say, 10,000 paintings, you might repeat some. I view the thumbnails of paintings on my large computer screen to sort and eliminate duplicates. But once in a while, I have trouble telling two paintings apart. Take the barns below, for instance.

These paintings depict the same barn. Probably done within a few years of each other. The technique isn’t all that different, and the composition is virtually the same. The same boards are missing, the same gaps in the structure, the same tractor in the shadows, and even the same birds along the roofline. But the silos are made of different materials. One has a snow fence and burn barrel and the other does not. The colors in the wood siding are different—one is bluer. But the angle of the fence posts and the trees along the horizon are virtually identical.

People have wondered how Dad didn’t grow bored painting the same subjects. I think it’s because he knew each one was unique somehow. When he chose a photo to paint, he probably knew if he’d painted it before (and I believe this was one of his favorite barns, which he painted a lot), but the one he did in the past was gone—sold, and out of sight. Maybe he felt like trying again because he liked painting it the first time. Or maybe it was just to challenge himself with the details, just to play with colors or textures, just to experiment with composition.

---

Check out these irises my dad painted, probably at least a decade or two apart.

The shadows are the same—look at the shadows of the petals on the stems and on the big leaf to the left of the blooms. Or the ones on the bottom petal, with that speck of sunlight getting through. The leaves are the same. The buds are in about the same places, but not exact. The colors are still green and purple.

They’re so similar. But they’re not the same.