"Observation"

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

"Observation is the optimal skill." This is especially true of the artist. It requires continual practice to see the seemingly insignificant details. It should be a priority in every area of life.

Many liberties were taken in this piece, especially with the color choices. I did try to keep the values the same, but the colors were selected based on all that was happening on my palette. So many times, colors will emerge in the process of mixing that are so lovely and different that it seems like a waste not to use them.

A "colorist" plays with all of these dynamics and it is especially exciting to me to have a reference photo to keep the piece going in a particular direction, but also to have the freedom to play around with color in the process. So what I end up with is an abstracted landscape. There was also a lot of play with the directional strokes of the paint to make the most of the dimensionality of this thick "wet into wet" technique.

Another liberty I took was in the direction of the tree trunks and a few limbs. When a piece is naturally a horizontal landscape, it could end up lacking a lot of energy. Introducing diagonals in the trees and directional strokes of the paint resolved the problem for me. The quote was written with a Mitchell #6 nib in the foreground weeds. There are diagonals there as well. so all in all, I am pleased with the piece because it is not perfectly rendered and has a lot of gestural movement in the way the paint was applied. That is what I live for in these paintings. And there you have it...just a few more things to think about. Please contact me personally to inquire about this piece.