A special feature about my upcoming solo show at the University of Nebraska’s Great Plains Art Museum in this month’s issue of Peaks&Plains Magazine.

Vaughan has spent most of her life on their family farm near Austin, Texas and as the toll bridges and highways began to interrupt the beautiful rural landscape and punctuate the stillness of the big open plains, she knew that her dream to sit on the farmhouse porch with her future grandchildren would not come true. So she began to paint what she could not save. She approached the project with a sense of urgency and from a spot deep in her heart, which bubbled to the surface and spilled on to her canvas as she captured daily life on the family farm before it was swallowed by ravenous Austin development.

The result was a beautiful collection of paintings that told the story of their farm – sunrises and sunsets, cattle resting in green fields, a tractor riding on a dirt cloud, a thunderstorm gobbling a sunny day, and a moon hanging from a blue velvet sky.

Artist V.…Vaughan is more than a painter. She is a storyteller, a diarist, a commentator, and a teacher. She paints because that is the best way she knows how to share her ideas, impressions, inspirations, and passions with others.

One of her biggest passions – second to her family – is the American farm and landscape, which is reflected in the hundreds of oil paintings the prolific artist created during the Last Year of the Farm project, inspired by the end of their farm, which had been in her husband’s family for four generations. She not only produced a painting every day for 365 days, she also captured a day in each of the four seasons by painting a scene every hour and kept a diary of the process.

Her intensity did not end with her own farm story. There was a great response from museum patrons and her blog followers. Each had a personal story of a family farm lost. So, Vaughan continued by embarking on a cross country journey, painting while “Passing America.” Her goal: to capture the vanishing farms on the American plains and the passing of our agrarian lifestyle. She calls these works “drive-by paintings” because she grabs the fleeting images on the move while traveling by train or car. While moving, she can only “grab a glance” and is left with an impression, which, as a landscape impressionist, describes the very nature of her subject: farms that are passing. At least 100 of these paintings will be on display at a solo museum exhibit Called Passing America: The Great Plains, which opens on Oct. 7 and runs until Dec. 11, 2011 at the Great Plains Art Museum, at the University of Nebraska in Lincoln.

Even though farms and landscapes dominate her work, she also paints people, animals, and wildlife of the plains. While travelling, she prefers to paint small so that she can paint more. When she returns to the studio, she often does larger works from her studies and photographs.

She has received critical acclaim and awards for her work, is a signature member of both the American Plains Artists and American Women Artists and was a finalist for Texas State Art Designation in 2010. Earlier work as an illustrator, cartoonist and graphic artist also earned her many awards and notable clients such as The Lady Bird Johnson Wildflower Center and Harcourt Publishing. She also offers painting workshops across America and teaches both at Hyde Park Baptist High School, and the Fredericksburg Artist’s School, in Texas.

Some of the most gratifying responses have come via her blog. One follower wrote, “Somehow you’ve managed to capture – within the daily activity and hussle-bussle on a farm – the special beauty and magic of being there.”

Even though the awards and recognition are affirmative, Vaughan continues to focus on improving as a painter and storyteller and this earnest and modest spirit is revealed in her work. Last Year on the Farm and Passing America projects might carry an element of melancholy and nostalgia because they represent the end of something dear and wonderful to her, but true to her positive spirit, she has turned her sadness into something good. The passing farms she paints will never be completely gone because through V….Vaughan’s lovely paintings and words she has given future generations – memories of the farm.