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Burn Brae Mansion
Prints of this painting, now titled The Ghosts
of Burn Brae Mansion, are now available, thanks to the generosity of
its owner. For details, and ordering information,
please click here.
Back in January, I
received an email from Andy R, who had discovered The Haunted Studio
online. He described Burn Brae Mansion, the inn that he owns, and requested
information about commissioning a haunted painting of it. He wrote:
We have quite a few ghosts in the Manor.
Apparently a woman in the attic and a man on the second floor. There
have also been quite a few reports of children's voices.
 It
took a while for things to get started, as it was then winter in the
Catskill Mountains of upstate New York, and everything was under a blanket of snow. The photos,
when they began to arrive in May, revealed a graceful sprawling
structure, with fieldstone accents and fanciful architectural details,
some of them existing only in old photos.
As far as the feeling of the house - what I'm
looking for is a haunted look, not necessarily Halloween.
Burn Brae was built for a daughter of the Singer
sewing machine family for a wedding gift. It was used as a summer house.
(The family) pretty much owned all of Glen Spey, NY at one time and
had 9 mansions like this one. Six were destroyed by fire. This is one of
the 3 survivors.
Due to the complexity of the structure, I opted to
send Andy a pencil sketch first. His feedback mentioned that there had
been a "widow's walk" atop the house as it had been back in the day, and
that he intends to replace it. An old photo provided other interesting
details, some of which found their way into the color study he next
viewed.
The finished painting was sent off late in July, and
I received the following message a few days later:
Got the painting today - Love it! Thanks Lew,
this is truly a one of a kind which will find many uses. I plan on
having greeting cards and post cards printed up as well as making it
the Home Page for the website,
www.BurnBraeManor.com . I may even put
the image on t-shirts. I can't wait to get it framed.
Thanks again Lew - You did not disappoint.
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