"Bushes and Weeds"

($40.00......6" x 6"......Water Soluble Oils on Gessobord)

"Bushes and weeds add texture in the landscape." There are some areas where weeds are not welcome, but in the untamed landscape, they provide a lot of interesting texture. Analogies can also be made in life. No one wants to be in the "weeds", but sometimes that is where we learn the most.

This is an extremely simple composition , but the simplicity offers an opportunity to play around a bit with the palette knife and create some interesting texture...as in the foreground. I also used the freedom of creating a simple piece to play around more with the palette knife by varying the length and direction of each stroke.

Also notice that diagonals were created with the shadows in front of the background trees. So even if the piece does not have obvious diagonals, they can be created by the way the paint is laid down.

One of the reasons the fall landscape is so appealing is the variation in color.   The orange in the foreground weeds is a direct complement of the sky color and a split complement of green. It's not as strong a "power punch" as red and green, but it is actually a bit more soothing.

Corners are still very much on my mind, so I made sure the image was cropped so that the tree line was different in each upper outside corner. It makes for a more interesting shape than having the same height all the way across. If Christmas doesn't have you all in a "knot", you might want to get your paints out today! And there you have it...just a few more things to think about.

Please contact me personally to inquire about this piece.