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This spirit can be readily sensed in certain entire regions closely identified with their unique architecture: the fortified medieval hill towns of Umbria and Tuscany, the stone villages and gently rolling landscapes of Devon and Gloucestershire; the white-washed houses and churches of the Greek islands of the Aegean; the mysterious prehistoric cliff dwellings of the American Southwest; or the tidy village greens of New England. 

 

We can experience the genius loci closer to home, as well. I feel a peculiar attraction to the North Mississippi hill country with its ruined, abandoned barns and rusted cotton gins that have frequently been the subjects of my watercolor paintings. In these paintings I try to capture the animating qualities of these decaying structures in the context of a lonely landscape, seemingly haunted by the spirits of hard-bitten tenant farmers and the children of former slaves. The Blue Ridge Mountains call to me, as well, where in the remote hollows of western North Carolina one still finds weathered tobacco barns and log cabins that until the mid-20th century continued to be built much as they were by the Scots-Irish pioneers. 

 

In such places the vernacular architecture—the traditional, indigenous buildings designed without architects—seems to have sprung directly from the place. These structures typically show only limited individual variety, the prototypes having evolved over time as a response to the particular climate, topography, geology, locally available building materials, and methods of construction, as well as to cultural factors such as history, means of subsistence, religion, and economy. Analysis of physical and cultural factors fails, however, to tell the whole story. The genius loci cannot be measured; it must be sensed. 

 

Meaning in architecture should never be limited to an understanding of the architectonic aspects. Architecture can be distinguished from the mere making of buildings in part by its ability or inability to evoke an emotional response in those who experience it. The genius loci, the sense of a place, and the emotion it evokes, is best captured by the empathetic eye of the artist.

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