Shelter took me on a wild ride, as I struggled to figure out how to put it all together without making the viewer dizzy. So many layers of landscape, and only one layer of paint. It is an image of a place, but it is also craft, an object made of cloth and paint, each brushstroke necessary and painted with the purpose of fitting together and describing the exact color of that tree, that limb-full of leaves, that particular part of the sky peeking through the leaves. Maintaining the integrity of the picture plane, while simultaneously expressing the mosaic of the color of living things in the blue air…that’s my holy grail. It is a difficult, but that is what painters do. There were some swirling motions that became too insistent and overtook the composition, so I had to add small stops, small brushstrokes to break the lines. Note: the color shifts are are result of changing light in my studio…it tells you how much light has to do with the color of paint!
