My River House in Ashe County

My history with the North Carolina mountains started when I was a kid, when we lived briefly in the Spring Haven Inn, right next to the historic studio of Elliot Dangerfield, which is now the Blowing Rock Art and History Museum. He was a big inspiration to me when I was young, a 19th century North Carolina artist who painted my home terrain. 

Then when I was a teenager, I came back to the North Carolina High Country to assist my brother-in-law Ben Long, also a painter. Soon after, I started art school at the Pennsylvania Academy, but I would rent a house back in Ashe County during the summers to get out of the city and into nature. It was the back door to me doing landscape painting, after really focusing on portrait and figurative drawing in school. For years, this particular house on the south fork of the New River was the place I was renting, and I developed a relationship with its owner. I fell in love with it, because it put me right there in the landscape and I didn’t have to go far for subject matter. It felt really personal because I was painting my own home. For many summers, I just rented it, and eventually the owner sold it to me. He offered it to me first and financed it for me at a great price, and he made it really easy for me to buy it because he knew I loved it, and he supported me as an artist. I didn’t really know what I was doing, I was buying a “second home” before I even had a primary residence, as I was still renting an apartment in Philadelphia, and eventually in Charlotte. 

It is a very simple farmhouse, built sometime in the 1930s, and survived the famous flood in the 40s, and more recently escaped disaster by only a few inches during Helene. I’ve done some work on it: a new roof, adding an upstairs studio, rebuilt the porch, new windows, and reworked the spring & pumphouse.

It is a very simple farmhouse, built sometime in the 1930s, and survived the famous flood in the 40s, and more recently escaped disaster by only a few inches during Helene. I’ve done some work on it: a new roof, adding an upstairs studio, rebuilt the porch, new windows, and reworked the spring & pumphouse.

After falling in love with Ashe County, this place became my bread and butter, and selling mountain landscapes turned into a career. 

Now this cabin is still my sanctuary, where I spend much of my summers, painting landscapes. I love to paint my “front yard”, so to speak. When I’m there in the summer, I go lay in the cool river and I just feel like I’m in heaven.