Spring 1 and Spring 3 (Favorite Green Space)

oil on panel
12" x 12"



Spring 2 is coming (spring itself is already here)! These two worked best together for a post.

The sky in the painting is more subtle and has lighter areas than in this reproduction. The sky and grass are very high-key in this as in the original, while the woods are in that neutral-budding-just-before-leaves state. Marks are loose and help show the space and growth patterns of the woods. The top green and bottom blue, both very saturated, are visual bookends. The curve of the lower green band is lyrical and comforting, like gentle waves or lying on your sofa. It's a funny painting because it has serenity as well as the snap of a ping-pong ball, blue on one side, green on the other. Spring is like that, lovely yet energetic. The sky and grass were both really that bright, done from sight from my studio window. Without the treatment of the center, they look like David Hockney's palette, hyperactive, not quite naturalistic.

Spring 3 (Favorite Green Space) is a block away from my house. I'm in farmland with corn, sheep, horses, cows, and unfortunately veal calves tied to their little shelters their whole lives, all on the same road. The green hill takes up three-fourths or so of the rectangle and obscures the bottoms of the trees. I look forward to the moment it comes into sight when I'm driving back home; in the bright sun it gives me a rush (some people get that when looking at Matthew McConaughey, not that I don't...). In those last two sentences you get the formal elements of design backing my work, visual perception, emotional resonance, and let's not forget sensuality (paint is very sensual, as nerdy as that may sound). There is my recipe. It's the winging it kind.