Big Tree Road, Lakewood, NY – 40 Years Later

On a hot summer day in July 1980, I drove up on Big Tree Road in Lakewood, NY pulled over, set up my easel in the meadow off the side of the road and made a painting of Chautauqua Lake in the background and a lone white house. It took me about two hours and I still feel the heat of the sun on my back, and I hear the insects buzzing around in the meadow while working on it.

This is a photograph of the resulting painting, which was 18 x 24 inches. The painting is long lost. I do not know who might have it today, or if it even still exists. But the photograph has been the lock-screen image on my work computer for many years now.

On a whim, while browsing Google Maps, I checked out the exact spot from where I parked.

There are trees now on the right where there was just open meadow 40 years ago on the right side of the road from where the painting was made.

But note, the two telephone poles in front of the house are still exactly the same, at the same angle, as they were in 1980. Somebody lived in that house then, somebody else lives there now, and they have no idea that their house the object of a painting, and now a blog post.