Utopia on the edge

Or 'Utopia in the Margins', oil on found plywood, 17''x20'' I had noticed this abandoned house up on a knoll off Old Lake Cowichan Rd, a former main thoroughfare to Lake Cowichan on Vancouver Island BC, and was smitten. I wanted to paint it. If you look closely you can just barely see it on the ridge, a beacon of something that had had worth. The location is cleared of otherwise dense forest for the hydro lines, and has a great view towards the river south and valley north. To me it looks very welcoming in its wildered surrounds. Its not an overpriced neighbourhood yet, and up close you can see it was a newer house, modest, but now left abandoned to the elements. Plants are creeping in, windows broken onto the carpet, small critters darting and mold growing. They couldn't pay their mortgage? It still has an air of being somewhere someone had chosen as special. Maybe for a family. This somehow makes it more full of dearly held hopes and dreams. I returned to the road and wandered up and down drawing from different spots, wanting a sense of that road that kept going, and the undemanding reprieve in the shelter to the side. Could I get the psycho-emotional swirl that was balanced between relief from the constant pressure of being on the road and the road's counter offer of an escape from lost dreams? What was the best angle to convey what that felt like physically in the body?