Our Driveway in the Summer is the luminous inaugural plein air painting in Don Yaun’s beloved Homestead series, capturing the cool, shaded respite of a full-leaf summer day along the 450-foot gravel driveway of his 11½-acre wooded property in Buford, Georgia. This 12″ × 16″ impressionistic acrylic celebrates the towering oaks, hickories, beeches, and dogwoods that form a dense, protective canopy overhead. Afternoon sunlight filters through the bright yellow-green leaves in the distance, glowing like embers, while the foreground deepens into rich shadowed greens. The winding path opens through a gated wooden fence, leading back to the home nestled in the woods—a peaceful escape whenever a breeze moves through the trees.
This scene holds profound personal significance: it evokes the couple’s first year on the property in the early 1980s, when there was no driveway, no fence, and only thick forest. Don and his wife blazed the trail along the ridge by hand, camping on weekends to clear land and build their life here. They even discovered glowing foxfire one magical evening. Now, decades later, with their two sons grown and living their own lives, Don walks this drive daily to get the mail, and the painting brings back those foundational memories of hard work, discovery, and the enduring beauty of their special homestead.