May 26th, 2012
Cox Reservation, Essex MA
Oil on Wood, 24 x 18 in
(sold)

Last week and this week I chose subjects that are challenging to me – all this close vegetation and the sky through an umbrella of trees present a huge tangle of relationships of light and shadow, colour and contrast, and warmth and cold (tones.) I like this one better than last week’s. Last week I got a lot of compliments from passers by as I worked, this week, not so. As I say too often, probably, if you really want to hit a high note of beauty, you have to have the courage to wade deep through lots of ugly to get there. This was really ugly for a long time as it slowly came into itself, but I feel like, for me, it made it through to the other side. (See this beside the photo I took of the composition before I started painting – scroll to the bottom of “Matching Scene to Painting.”)