No Place to Hide
‘No Place to Hide’ is homage to my family and ancestors and the land of the Great Plains which formed my aesthetics. Most of these paintings were painted within the last year. The painting “January” was inspired by an old black and white photo that I received from my mother, Vera May, after she died in 2000. The year was 1958, It was my eighth birthday. I was sitting on the table at my Uncle Dean and Aunt Lucille’s farmhouse near Oconto, Nebraska in Custer County.
When my father died in 2005, a book that I had given him, “Photographing the American Dream” by Solomon Butcher was returned to me. This documentation of Homesteaders Sod houses and the settlers who built them became another major influence inspiring these paintings. The photographs are portraits of not only the families and their few precious possessions, they are an expression of the state of existence, being in a land that is frozen in timelessness. Their faces express a severity that the plains etched into them, showing their pride, hope and determination for survival. My father’s parents, Lucy and Beverly Floyd Milhoan arrived from the east in Western Nebraska in a covered wagon in 1872. They claimed land by taking advantage of the Homestead Act of 1862 by President Lincoln. The act set the stage for the great expansion west, influenced by the “Jeffersonian Vision” a notion of yeoman farmers spreading democratic communities. Grand advertisements promising the “Garden of Eden” and free land if one homesteaded it for Five years. Two out of five farmers succeeded. This was a difficult endeavor, surviving dry farming, extreme weather-patterns, winds and empty lonely spaces.
My grandmother Lucy Milhoan, who I dedicate this exhibit to, inspired and influenced my character and imagination. She was a great “story teller” and creative in her crafts of embroidery, quilt making and rug braiding from recycled clothes. This created my appreciation of the handmade/homemade as well as folk art in general. Lucy’s sister died while crossing the plains on their way west and the family couldn’t abide by leaving her gravesite and settled in Overton, Nebraska. This feeling–memory of close knit family and open space and intense weather has made a lasting impression on me
Author Wright Morris describes it best from his book” God’s country and my people.”
“Is it a house or an Ark? A scud seems to blow the sea of grasses and the land falls away like the sea from a swell. On the receding horizon, waves of grain break like surf. The colors run where the grains stirs or bleed, where the blacktop smokes like an oil slick, evaporates into a shimmering blur of heat and light. The color scheme is sun-dried denim and kiln-dried earth; like the sea there is no shade. There is no place to hide. A mindless wind fills the void, but nobody hears it. It’s the thunderclap of silence that wakes the sleeper.”
Faded images appear of the family seeking shelter, planting a fragile fruit sapling with an eye on the approaching storm. Coming full circle, in the land of plenty from the land of sparse and empty, the guideposts are apparitions of the heart and mind.
Ron Milhoan