I walk most every morning, starting out just before dawn. As my Facebook friends know, I regularly post images of the things I see on my morning walks, usually skies and effects of light, but occasionally wildlife (deer, snakes, turtles, rabbits) and cows. I have made a few paintings over the last couple of years of early morning subjects from my walks but the Lennox Woods project has kept me pretty occupied. I made this painting for the Small Works, Great Wonders show at the National Cowboy & Western Heritage Museum opening this November. I am looking forward to painting more morning subjects once I am out of the Woods.
My infatuation with morning light continues. I have several larger pieces on the easel right now, but I actually did this little study before we left for Taos.
As readers of this blog know, I am drawn to transitional times of day as the subject of my landscape paintings. For the most part, the evening hours have been my favorite subject. I love those brief moments when the day surrenders to the night. Although I walk at all times of the day, evening walks have always been my favorite. For the last four months though, I've been walking around dawn each day. I have to say, this time has inspired a new appreciation for the morning twilight hour.
This painting is based on a field about a mile from our property. The foreground shadow is mysteriously transparent, something which doesn't really show very well in the photograph. I've included a couple of details. You can get a larger view by clicking on them.
I used many many glazes on the foreground, creating suggestions of form within the shadows by subtle shifts in value and temperature. The road was laid in with thin opaque paint and then glazed over with the foreground glazes to bring it together and keep the value relationships correct. The lightstruck areas were created with thicker, lighter opaque paint.
The trees were laid in with several layers of transparent paint, then form was created with passages of velaturas and glaze impasto passages. Dry paint was dragged over some areas, and in some places the underpainting was left undisturbed.
The sky was painted with several layers of opaque paint and scumbled heavily in some areas. Scumbles were pulled over the trees in the distance to create atmosphere and the illusion of distance.
Dawn Spills Over the Hill (2009) 10 x 10 Private Collection
As we celebrate this blessed season with family and friends, its also a time to be grateful for the blessings we've received over the past year. I want to thank all those who take the time to read this blog, my students and artist friends for their friendship, inspiration and camaraderie this year. And, as always, I am grateful to my collectors and galleries that represent my work for making it possible for me to make a living doing what I love.
My very best wishes to you all for a Merry Christmas!
Morning on the Flats 16 x 30 Available at M Gallery of Fine Art
All up and down the west coast of Florida, there are bays, inlets, and saltwater flats- the skinny (shallow) water where the best fishing can be found. For years, my dad and my husband Steve would meet in Cedar Key or Homosassa in the hours before dawn to head out into the Gulf to fish. My dad, born and raised in Florida, had been a bass fisherman all his life, and had never spent much time on open saltwater (unless you count that little trip from England to Normandy in 1944). It was a new challenge and one he readily embraced in that last decade of his life. So, I was thinking of them, out there on the flats at dawn, when I painted this.
Summer is waning. Every morning this week its been a little cooler and the day a bit shorter. The morning sun rises a few degrees farther to the south. I love the change of seasons- when everything in nature-from the mighty Sun to the lowly hummingbird- obeys its destiny.
This serene image belies the stormy weather we are having at the moment. Thunderstorms and tornadoes are moving across north Texas so I will post this quickly before we lose power and/or cable. I'll be back tomorrow with an exciting report on the Tomato Growing Throw Down!
The other day I read that scientists have determined that space begins 62 miles above the earth's surface. The article included a photograph taken from space at an oblique angle of the earth and its atmosphere. It was shocking- that thin little envelope of air separating us from deep, black space. Sixty two miles- that's about the same distance I drive round trip to the nearest Walmart. Nothing could more emphatically demonstrate the fragile, tenuous nature of our existence. And yet, the thing that struck me- just as it does when I stand at the edge of a pond or watch the weather blow in from the west- is the incredible inventiveness, the sheer creativity of Creation.
