{"id":472923,"date":"2026-02-11T13:37:08","date_gmt":"2026-02-11T13:37:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/472923\/"},"modified":"2026-02-11T13:37:08","modified_gmt":"2026-02-11T13:37:08","slug":"painted-by-hand-a-stop-motion-film-eulogizes-a-lost-childhood-home-colossal","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/472923\/","title":{"rendered":"Painted by Hand, a Stop-Motion Film Eulogizes a Lost Childhood Home \u2014 Colossal"},"content":{"rendered":"

Jason Mitcham<\/a>\u2019s childhood home in Greensboro, North Carolina, is no longer standing. In 2011, the local government seized the house and the land he grew up on via eminent domain to widen what was then High Point Road into what\u2019s now Gate City Boulevard. Mitcham last saw the site in 2023, when a paved highway blanketed where the neighborhood once stood, and fragments of garages and barns still marked the landscape.<\/p>\n

To memorialize this beloved landmark, Mitcham hand-painted \u201cEver Behind the Sunset<\/a>,\u201d a touching stop-motion film that combines a series of expressive compositions with audio from the artist\u2019s mother and his own home videos taken throughout the 1980s. Panels of thick, gestural brushstrokes animate a story of loss, grief, and remembrance as if viewed through a dreamlike haze.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

Mitcham shares that the film reflects a series of compounding devastations, both personal and local: \u201cthe collapse of my father\u2019s civil engineering and land-surveying firm after the 2008 housing crisis, my parents\u2019 bankruptcy, his death, followed by my mother\u2019s, and the community\u2019s fight against the commercial development that would permanently alter their neighborhood.\u201d<\/p>\n

It\u2019s worth watching the behind-the-scenes video that shares more of the artist\u2019s process and thinking. Explore an archive of his films and works on canvas on his website<\/a> and Instagram<\/a>. You might also like the paintings of Jeremy Miranda<\/a>.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

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