Twilight, White Light, Silver Woods

all 8" x 10" oil on panel

I just came across this Van Gogh, Painter on His Way to Work. I've never seen it before. There are so many paintings I haven't seen in person or in books that are viewable on-line. My professors in graduate school said there were only black and white photographs of paintings when they were students. It's so different now.

Of course I love the bracketing with the two trees in this one. They are like figures, the actual figure bisecting them. The lyricism is embedded in the color, space, and shape play. The vanishing point in the upper left marked by the point of the green field/triangle. The arch leading to its apex makes a shape echoed in the walking stick and the artist's leg and shadow, suggesting a gait or bounce in the step created by this visual rhythm.

The color in my new landscape paintings is subdued with Silver Woods crossing the divide into drawing. Twilight has a complementary blue/orange thing going on which contributes to the sense of tension between the trees. The curved black shape at the bottom seems to suggest looking out a car window. The neutral plane on the right edge has strokes connecting the black with the trees. The central light blue light is the calm amongst it all.

There is a fluidity in all of them that I like and a space I don't usually paint. I'm typically drawn to very open spaces but here the focus is finding open spaces within the woods. Leaves rustle, wind blows, shadows move. The planes of trees, space, and ground interact. The green leaves in White Light appear to extend toward the viewer, a tricky thing. I would like to do it again, to puzzle it out, to feel it again and reinvent it. I'll see what I can do.