Murder at the Farmhouse

By Dylan Scarzafava

I chose three pieces of my dad Anthony Scarzafava’s art for my bedroom because they all matched a theme I had in my head.

I wanted the room to feel like a misty forest. The walls are a dark green with a greyish-blue tone, like trees disappearing into fog. The deep reds in the paintings remind me of the color of an old barn house hidden somewhere in the woods.

Once I put the paintings together, I started joking that they represented a murder at the farmhouse.

There is mystery in them. The dark reds feel dramatic, the rough textures create chaos, and the shapes make it seem like something happened there. I do not know exactly what happened, but that is part of the fun. Each painting feels like a different piece of the story.

Of course, none of this was necessarily what my dad had in mind when he painted them. It is just the story I started seeing once they were hanging together.

That is something I like about his work. You can live with the paintings and find your own meaning in them. These three fit the room, but they also gave it a strange little mystery of its own.

Somewhere in this misty forest, something happened at the farmhouse.