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| sale pending: Sumac in January; casein tempera on panel; 8" x 10" |
Paintings have a powerful presence. They can make you aware of so many things you often took for granted. Take, for example, the color of the sky. When we were young, we were taught that skies are blue. In fact, there are entire picture books devoted to assigning basic colors to objects. But it turns out, as the Impressionists revealed, local color is quite different from what we actually see. Local color is the picture book color - the one a paint dealer would pick out for you if you brought an object to him and asked him to match the color. But when taken out of the paint dealer's light and atmosphere - and when adjoined with other objects of differing colors - and pushed back in distance - and mixed with a bit of artistic passion - you end up with another color entirely. Skies can be green, purple, orange, yellow and - some times - blue.
4 comments:
This painting is very somber, probably due to your color selections. One can feel the 'death' or sleep of the plants and tree and you've portrayed winter very well - so well, I just got a chill even in the warm house!
Thank you, Jan! I really wanted to paint the sumac seed pods. They’re pretty amazing the way they’re held all at the same height. They require a tremendous amount of stress before they’ll sprout. Something I learned after trying to plant some myself. Luckily some have come up in my wild areas without my doing a thing - most likely being ‘planted’ there by a bird.
What time of the day was this? Great color.
Thanks, David! It was between 4 and 4:45pm - I remember getting home by 5 that day.
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