american Memory
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When I was five or six years old, my Great Aunt
Sara let me sit in her lap and steer her big Chevy Bel Air down Davis Dr. in
Arlington, Texas, while she worked the pedals.
(I suspect she also had a hand secretly securing the steering wheel, but
can’t say for sure.) It was one of those
thrilling moments of growing up, a rite of passage, that cannot be
forgotten. I knew then I had the driving
bone and was destined to love automobiles.
My work as an artist has consistently focused on the American experience, particularly of the first sixty-five or so years of the 20th century. The events and values of that era are the foundation of my personal identity and I get the greatest pleasure trying to capture some of the essence of that time. --Charlie Hukill |
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Many of the persons represented in these pieces are close to me in one way or another. A couple of them are me, which is about as close at hand as I can get. A couple of them are my wife, Betty, my favorite subject matter. The rest are either family or those dear friends I consider to be extended family. I like to paint, and the thing I like to paint most are the people I am closest to.
I also find my inspiration in photographs, some from my own family collection, some from friends, some I find in antique stores and on EBay. When I began researching my recent exhibition, "Fenders and Headlights," I was planning a different theme, but was struck by how many photos I found of people with their cars and I decided that would be the subject of my work: people with automobiles. The motor vehicle played such a significant role in the evolution of the American identity, specifically during that period of history that interests me, it seemed a natural fit. In the book, Only Yesterday: An Informal History of the 1920s, Frederick Allen Lewis notes:
“And as it [the automobile] came, it changed the face of America. …villages on Route 61 bloomed with garages, filling stations, hot-dog stands, chicken-dinner restaurants, tearooms, tourists’ rests, camping sites, and affluence.
Meanwhile a new sort of freedom was being made possible by the enormous increase in the use of the automobile, and particularly of the closed car. (In 1919 hardly more than 10 per cent of the cars produced in the United States were closed; by 1924 the percentage had jumped to 43, by 1927 it had reached 82.8.) The automobile offered an almost universally available means of escaping temporarily from the supervision of parents and chaperons, or from the influence of neighborhood opinion. Boys and girls now thought nothing…of jumping into a car and driving off at a moment’s notice—without asking anybody’s permission—to a dance in another town twenty miles away, where they were strangers and enjoyed a freedom impossible among their neighbors. The closed car, moreover, was in effect a room protected from the weather which could be occupied at any time of the day or night and could be moved at will into a darkened byway or a country lane.
The automobile, which was rapidly making America into a nation of nomads; teaching all manner of men and women to explore their country, and enabling even the small farmer, the summer-boarding-house keeper, and the garage man to pack their families into flivvers and tour southward from auto-camp to auto-camp for a winter of sunny leisure.”
The automobile has long been a symbol of success and a reflection of personal identity. I feel certain if you look back through your family albums, you will find images similar to these. I hope what you see here strikes a chord with you, a remembrance of your first automobile and your love for it.
--Charlie Hukill
I also find my inspiration in photographs, some from my own family collection, some from friends, some I find in antique stores and on EBay. When I began researching my recent exhibition, "Fenders and Headlights," I was planning a different theme, but was struck by how many photos I found of people with their cars and I decided that would be the subject of my work: people with automobiles. The motor vehicle played such a significant role in the evolution of the American identity, specifically during that period of history that interests me, it seemed a natural fit. In the book, Only Yesterday: An Informal History of the 1920s, Frederick Allen Lewis notes:
“And as it [the automobile] came, it changed the face of America. …villages on Route 61 bloomed with garages, filling stations, hot-dog stands, chicken-dinner restaurants, tearooms, tourists’ rests, camping sites, and affluence.
Meanwhile a new sort of freedom was being made possible by the enormous increase in the use of the automobile, and particularly of the closed car. (In 1919 hardly more than 10 per cent of the cars produced in the United States were closed; by 1924 the percentage had jumped to 43, by 1927 it had reached 82.8.) The automobile offered an almost universally available means of escaping temporarily from the supervision of parents and chaperons, or from the influence of neighborhood opinion. Boys and girls now thought nothing…of jumping into a car and driving off at a moment’s notice—without asking anybody’s permission—to a dance in another town twenty miles away, where they were strangers and enjoyed a freedom impossible among their neighbors. The closed car, moreover, was in effect a room protected from the weather which could be occupied at any time of the day or night and could be moved at will into a darkened byway or a country lane.
The automobile, which was rapidly making America into a nation of nomads; teaching all manner of men and women to explore their country, and enabling even the small farmer, the summer-boarding-house keeper, and the garage man to pack their families into flivvers and tour southward from auto-camp to auto-camp for a winter of sunny leisure.”
The automobile has long been a symbol of success and a reflection of personal identity. I feel certain if you look back through your family albums, you will find images similar to these. I hope what you see here strikes a chord with you, a remembrance of your first automobile and your love for it.
--Charlie Hukill
