Backyard, MA
Oil on Canvas, 18 x 24 in

It’s been raining all day and I resent it; Saturday is supposed to be painting day. So I put on my warmest hat and winter coat, and went out back and sat in the rain for three or four hours, painting this. Oil paint, I found, is not adversely affected by water – and in fact, with the knife it can produce some really interesting effects. However the volume of water that accumulated on the canvas, palette, and on my person eventually made it extraordinarily difficult to see what I was doing. So I stopped, will revisit tomorrow. It bothers me that the green of the flowers’ leaves is obviously very different from how it looks in the photo. I’ll have to look into that tomorrow.