Jefferson Stokes’ art is a lesson in history. The scenes he paints on planking and slate from ancient barns and old farm tools such as metal pails, shovels and a cattle-feeding dish tell a story about life in rural America.

Stokes hopes the little pieces of Americana he’s preserving will become part of history: The back of each item includes a description of the painted scene and information about the object such as where it originated and what purpose it served before becoming a painting surface.

“My reason for being an artist is that maybe 200, 300 years from now people will see my work and maybe that stuff won’t be there anymore” he said.

In the basement of the turn-of-the-century, antiques filled Mount Holly house where he spent his childhood, Stokes prepares the groundwork for the paintings and reclaimed objects he sells at art shows, craft fairs and festivals.

He’ll use gesso to fill cracks in the seat of the wooden chair a child sat in decades ago while learning his ABC’s. Wood peeling from a drawer rescued from a decaying sewing machine table will get a dab of glue before the piece is turned into a shadow box. A rusted 2-by-4-inch hinged, metal box will get a once-over with an abrasive cleaner and wire brush, then a coating of rustpreventive paint before it starts a new life as a trinket box.

Stokes, 63, collects objects from various sources, including farm, estate sales and friends familiar with his work.

He also collects unusual objects, such as tree fungus. Once a year, usually in October, Stokes rises at 3 a.m. for a five-hour drive to Vermont and western Massachusetts to collect chunks of fungus from sugar maple trees. He hunts all day for fungus, snapping photographs of interesting scenes along the way to use as subject for his painting.

He enjoys the challenge of adding his artwork to nature’s own - the irregularities of the hardened fungus blend into scenes he paints on them.

Stokes puzzles over manmade objects he’s unfamiliar with, delighting in unique qualities such as holes punched into the green pail once used at a feed mill.

It’s a hide-stretcher, he said, holding up a slab of wood with a leather loop for handing. The 1920's-era piece used by trappers came from a farm near Turnersville, Gloucester County, he explained.

Laths from old homes frame the paintings he creates on canvas or wood.

“It’s bringing back an era, several different eras that are lost” he said.

The interior of Stokes’ 3-story home is a blend of art and nature. Antique chairs and wooden trunks share space with artwork and moose antlers, split logs cover the walls of his childhood bedroom. A passionate hat-collecter, Stokes’ headgear, mostly baseball caps, hang from hooks in several rooms.

Painting is done in the corner of a second floor bedroom. Seated on an antique chair with a crocheted seat cover, Stokes works on several pieces at a time, painting backgrounds, then adding details form the photographs taken during his extensive travels. On the wall in front of him, pinned to leafy wallpaper alongside an etched mirror blotched with age, is a Timex stopwatch that belonged to his father serves as a clock. A worktable holds dozens of tubes of acrylic paints.

Stokes paints for about four hours, stops for dinner, falls asleep while watching television, then resumes painting until about 4 a.m. That weekday schedule holds, unless, “I get a call to play golf,’ which happens two or three days a week.

Stokes’ first piece of artwork, an underwater scene drawn with crayons when he was 9, hangs along the attic stairway, along with two Picasso-style painting.

An admirer of Spanish artist Pablo Picasso and the French impressionists, Stokes subtly works impressionism into his own paintings.

Art however, was not in the picture when Stokes graduated from Temple University in Philadelphia with a degree in English. Even though he had been art editor of Mount Holly High School’s yearbook in 1958, after college, he played and taught tennis for 18 years, worked in an office or two and taught elementary school several years before turning art into a livelihood 33 years ago.

While traveling through his career, Stokes has also trekked across the United States, including Alaska, and throughout Europe. A 1991 visit to Russia was especially memorable, he said. From 1975 to 1992, art shows from mid-April through mid-July sent him across Canad from Quebec to Edmonton.

An only child, Stokes credits his parents, the late Elwood “Toby” Stokes and the late Louise Hinkle Stokes, with helping him develop his craft. Time spent at his father’s building-supply company in Mount Holly gave him an opportunity to learn to use tools and paint. The elder Stokes also was a history buff.

“As a kid, I got to like wood, saws and paint,” said Stokes. “I used to paint signs for him (his father).”

He said his mother, a concert pianist, inspired a sensitivity toward nature. Stokes said he enjoys talking to people, and believes the people he meets in his travels and at craft shows contribute to his artistry.

Stokes is off to an art show or craft fair nearly every weekend, but leaves December open for filling special orders. His prices range from $95.00 for 3-by-1 inch painting on wood to $1,000 for a 24-by-30-inch painting.