LOOKING WEST

LOOKING WEST is a new painting, delivered last week to Earthen Vessel Gallery in Durango, CO. Breaking my attraction to horizontal landscape formats presented a bit of a challenge, but worked itself out as I “sketched in” the under painting.

I chose a vertical format for this piece because I wanted to place a darker cloud near the horizon and I didn’t want it to overwhelm other elements in the painting. Keeping a good deal of breathing room around it, especially above it, allowed it to be attention getting, but not dominating. I am currently working on two horizontal landscape paintings with a darker floating cloud mass and will work to keep those masses from crowding out all else on the canvas.

I find myself looking up at the clouds, trying to implant some images into my head to draw upon as I begin a new piece. I don’t really like to work from photographs, but find I need to reference a few when laying out certain elements of the sky. Possibly the more landscape paintings I complete, the less I will need to use reference materials and the smoother the flow will be.

Two other paintings took the trip to Durango and are available in the gallery. Will post another soon…from the studio