by me, acrylic on canvas, 7.5×9.5 inches
I did this painting from a picture that my father took in December 2025. We have frequent high winds here in Idaho. In this picture, the wind has knocked power poles down along this rural road, stretching into the distance. You can see that the wires are still connecting the poles together. In addition, the wind has taken the metal “wheel lines” (used for irrigation) and blown them in among the power poles. The white line snaking across the field in the middle distance is a wheel line that has been pushed out of shape. Finally, you can see tumbleweeds caught among all the works of man on the road there. The white van belongs to the power company. It has its doors open, and its boom is protruding off to the right. Idaho Power is always very good about immediately starting to fix disasters like this. They will even send people out while the storm is still going on to try and restore power.
I used to only want to paint nature landscapes, but the longer I live in Idaho farm country, the more interested I get in including things like power poles and grain silos in my paintings. They have a certain sci-fi splendor. When I first saw this photograph, I knew I wanted to paint it because of the repeating lines of the fallen power poles. I thought it would be relatively simple: paint the fields, then add the lines bisecting them.
The longer I painted, the more of the mess I was able to see. I literally did not notice the hardware still on the fallen power poles until I started painting it. It won’t surprise you to learn that I have greatly simplified this scene. There were additional broken-off pieces of power poles, and additional bits of wheel line, that I’ve had to leave out.
