Morrison Place

Morrison Place

Oil on canvas, 16 x 12", Completed Spring 1996

Commission for Rob and Moria

Painted for Tom's neighbors at the time. They were moving to the Southwest and wanted a memento of their stay on Morrison Place. Tom's first home was two homes down behind the beige home in the right foreground.

A diversion from the regular portrait of the home, in fact one of the neighbors thought it was a portrait of her home and years later wanted to buy it so Tom printed copies of it for her. The sweeping panorama of the neighborhood includes as many neighbor’s as possible. Fred working in his massive garden on the left, he tills the hillside until the whole embankment is flush with flowers. Not a day goes by not seeing Fred working on his garden. Funny story of the house just down from him, the home that was commissioned, the current owner wanted a garden so decided use a piece of Fred’s land, at his suggestion they leave his land along they did nothing. The commissioners are in the foreground walking their dog. Going further down the left side of the street, Dot is talking to neighbor. To the right in the pink t-shirt is Jodie working in her garden with her son David looking on. Behind their home is the Jewish cemetery. Legend has it that a Jewish family owned the land and wanted to build a home on the property but the Wasps of Clifton blocked the construction so the Jewish family made it a cemetery. Some of the graves go back to 1860. Not to be undone, the woman who lived in Tom’s home before they bought it called this street a street that should be bulldozed because it did not fit the palatial homes that are behind the scene. In the old days there were only huge mansions with names like Resor, Morrison, Ludlow, built on plots a quarter mile square, dotting Clifton, acting as a wilderness preserve for the wealthy Cincinnatians. Just down the hill was the canal so heavy stone and building materials could be delivered to build these mansions. Over time still very large, magnificent homes were built but eventually as the land got parceled out by the descendants smaller and smaller homes were built on smaller new roads and Morrison Place is one of these small connector roads.