The traditional folksong of the Appalachians is close to my heart.  I inherited an enthusiasm for such music from my father.  With its Celtic origins, it has provided my connection to the Southern landscape since my arrival here twenty three years ago.

 

The songs of this region have given me a familiar narrative and a human history that connects to my own background.

These stories are old, but one only has to pick up a newspaper to see they remain fully contemporary. Lovers still fall prey to despair and suicide, or end up in the crime report.  These are paintings are set very much in the present, but nothing taking place in them is new.

The South wears its passion on its sleeve. It possesses what is referred to as a ‘culture of honor’, which is a gift to any artist, writer or musician.  As in the Scottish Border Country, where ‘Barbara Allen’ originated many hundreds of years ago, people here take things personally. The temperament is reflected in the landscape:

‘Moreover, there was the influence of the Southern physical world- itself a sort of cosmic conspiracy against reality in favor of romance.  The country is one of  extravagant colors, of proliferating foliage and bloom, of flooding yellow sunlight, and, above all, perhaps, of haze.  Pale blue fog hangs above the valleys in the morning, the atmosphere smokes faintly at midday, and through the long slow afternoon cloud-stacks tower from the horizon and the earth-heat quivers upwards through the iridescent air, blurring every outline and rendering every object vague and problematical…. But I must tell you the sequel to this mood is invariably the thunderstorm.’

‘The Mind of the South’ W.J. Cash  1941

‘Dark Corners’: The Appalachian Murder Ballad

Greenville Museum of Art 2012

Morris Museum of Art 2013

Art Museum of Myrtle Beach 2014

An interview that discusses the ballad series further is available on the following online

Art Magazine:

Interview with Julyan Davis : Painting Perceptions

All music courtesy of Greg and Lucretia Speas.