Lindsay Barrick is a young mixed-media artist living and creating in western North Carolina. She is currently working on a series of encaustic paintings and ekphrastic poems that center on her home state of West Virginia, exploring themes of family, communion with the land, and the difficult issues facing the people of Appalachia including mountain top removal and fracking. The body of work will be shown in her one-woman show, part of the Exhibiting Artist Series, in Bethlehem NC in August 2014.

On Leaving My Parents in West Virginia
By Lindsay Barrick

Daring to look back, I saw you hold hands
in the very spot your mother would stand
to wave her tearful granddaughter goodbye.

“It’s tradition,” I managed to mutter,
blowing the horn at the top of the hill–
last chance to echo, “Ta ta for now.”

Seeing myself in you and you in her
opened in me the quiet possibility
of a life that lasts beyond farewells.