OVERTONES


OVERTONES
36" x 36"
Acrylics, Oil, Metallics & Dry Oatmeal
on Gallery Canvas.
Completed March 26, 2022


OVERTONES was such a personal composition. I hope you love this true story.
The composition had lived in my head for several years. Not because I had planned to paint the composition abstractly, no. The composition lived in my head due to a frightening event that I experienced.

If you have ever lived in SW Montana, or if you currently live in SW Montana, you might have heard of a famous town called Copper City.
Back in the mining days of old, Copper City was a flourishing mining town where thousands of people flooded to, in order to mine copper and gold.

In the summer of 2007, my husband Kurt invited me to take a trip to see the old mining town called Copper City. Curiosity drove me to happily accept Kurt's invitation, so we hopped into our four-wheel drive pick-up truck and headed for Copper City which was merely a few miles from our home.

In order to find the old historic mining town, you have to keep your eyes wide open in order to find the tiny little sign attached to the top of a 2x4" post hammered into the ground.
Make a right at that little sign and now you are on the right road that leads you to the once historical abandoned town.

As we made the right hand turn onto the Copper City road I said to Kurt, "it is very beautiful here." The landscape was nothing more than miles of Montana grasses swaying in a slight breeze and hills invaded by deer, antelope and wildflowers.  

It didn't take long to realize that the road up to Copper City was so narrow that our large four by four Ford truck with very wide tires could easily take a dive off of the cliff that became more and more narrow as we slugged along the road to the top.

In all honesty, I'll never forget how nervous I became as we continued on to the mountain where an actual Western mining town was used for miners to get rich over a century ago.
A half hour later Kurt sees a sign that pointed to the abandoned town. What the sign meant to me was that we had many more miles to drive up, up and up to our destination while our truck was barely driving on the tiny, narrow dirt and rocky road.

To be very honest, I am a big chicken! Therefore, I made many frightened noises the entire trip to the top. I literally had white knuckles as I held on to the dashboard.

Eventually, Kurt discovered a sign ahead that said YOU ARE ENTERING COPPER CITY.
I was so frighted and so shook up that I will admit my fear. The drive on that tiny narrow road was so deeply frightening that I had my eyes closed shut and my head pointed down for 90% of time that it took to get up there. 

Kurt parked the truck on a large swath of gorgeous green grass. He opened his door and began to walk around. I, on the other hand, sat in shock, was rendered speechless. It was a drive that a big chicken will never forget.

Eventually, I composed myself enough to take a chance of exiting our truck. Once I was standing on the ground, I became very humble and grateful for the site I was seeing. I was standing at the top of the world that was dug out to not only create a hidden city but also dug out to discover the copper and gold so the miners could get rich. And many of the miners did strike it rich. Trying to describe the visual impact is impossible. However, the impact never left me.

After many years of reliving the drive up and then the amazement of the town in that enormous mountain I decided to paint what my eyes could see; an amazing place that thrived during an amazing time in history.

-Susie Rosso Wolf 

 

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