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SYNOPSIS
Sam Bartlett’s formidable antagonist has four legs. Sol, a miniature donkey, schemes daily to outwit his kindly caretaker. This delightful rural drama regales a symbiosis of plants, humans, dogs, and livestock, with wild creatures observing from secluded, weedy perimeters.
Retired from teaching, artist Sam farms thirty acres. His popular paintings of vast prairies at sunset are selling well. He plans to market organic herbs and produce, hiring local after-school teens. Begrudgingly raised on a farm, he once swore that when he grew up, he’d never go back. Time and age break promises.
Elysia boasts a pretty town square, complete with a handsome county courthouse. Sam’s girlfriend, Annie, is a food writer who travels a lot. Bartlett Farm is her sanctuary.
The Art of
Farming is a
hopeful tale about stewardship of the land, the animals, and of each other. It
honors the integrity of agriculture, as expressed in ancient literature and
art.
REVIEW
Readers journey along with Sam
and his thoughts, almost in a stream-of-consciousness kind of way, though there
are titled chapters that group topics together.
As a retired art professor, Sam frames his musings through an artist’s
lens, so the descriptions of everything from a Texas sunset to the shenanigans
of a Sicilian miniature donkey are richly detailed, layered, and nuanced.
Readers are treated to great
pieces of Texana and a plethora of other tidbits as Sam often segues from the
topic at hand to a related one – or meanders around with only the loosest
connection to where he starts. Sam is very much a stop-and-smell-the-roses kind
of fellow, and it’s refreshing to live in the moments with him in his rural
life and learn a thing or two in the process.
While it’s clear that the author
has a way with words and writes passages with punch and panache, the book needs
thorough editing. I found the repetitive
phrases, typos, and grammatical inconsistencies a huge distraction. Many
readers won’t notice or care if they do, but it’s disappointing for me. And I
feel the book suffers with a bit of an identity crisis as being categorized as
fiction.
Reading the author’s bio and
seeing his illustrations scattered throughout the book, THE ART OF FARMING
feels like a memoir. It would have been more satisfying for me to know I was
reading author T.D. Motley’s reflections about the life he’s lived and his
observations of the life he’s living. Instead, I was constantly looking for the
standard plot elements I expect in a work of fiction, and there really aren’t
any. There’s no big turning point and no grand resolution. The characters are
merely sketches and not fully fleshed-out people that I’ll remember long after
the book is shelved.
Perhaps I won’t recall the humans, but truth be told, I’ll remember the wonderful critters of THE ART OF FARMING. Motley’s care and compassion for animals shine when he writes about them, and those are what give me ALL the feels. Those passages are why I will remember Sam Bartlett, and I’ll think about him and his menagerie living on in the fictitious Elysia, Texas.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
T.D. Motley writes about art and organic farming. Born in Beaumont, Texas, he has been drawing since the age of three. His family has farmed in Texas since the mid-19th century. For many years, he and his wife, artist Rebecca, marketed their organic, heirloom herbs and produce to North Texas chefs and farmers' market customers.
Motley is Professor Emeritus of Art and Art History at Dallas College. His drawings and paintings have been exhibited nationally and are included in numerous collections across the U.S. and Texas. He has lectured at the Dallas Museum of Art, the Umlauf Sculpture Garden and Museum in Austin, the Meadows Museum at Southern Methodist University, and the Amon Carter Museum of American Art in Fort Worth. He is a contributing author for Eutopia and ArtSpiel and has written about mid-century modern Texas artists for DB/Zumbeispiel and the Grace Museum in Abilene. Motley has received Fulbright grants to Belgium, the Netherlands, and the United Kingdom.
Motley is the past president of the board of Artist Boat, a Galveston-based nonprofit that teaches students about coastal nature through art and science. He served for several years as chair of the North Texas Fulbright Teacher Exchange Peer Review Committee. Previously, he worked as a printer in the U.S. Air Force, an illustrator for Ling-Temco-Vought Corporation, and a cartoonist for the infamous Dallas Notes from the Underground newspaper. His artworks can be seen at J. Peeler Howell Fine Art in Fort Worth.
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