Landscape

“Sheriff’s Meadow Fog”, this is a small painting, 6″ x 8″, oil on canvas panel. This painting has SOLD.

Living in town for the winter has its bonuses like walking to the movies or a restaurant. But when I start to miss all the open fields and water views of Chilmark and up-island, I remember I have access to this little sanctuary behind the house. I have done 10 or 20 paintings around Sheriff’s Meadow over the years. Yet, when I think I have “found” the last painting I could ever create here, up pops something new due to weather, season, time of day, light, or in this case pruning and mowing off the path. I left for a walk around the pond a half hour before sunset. Usually I would carry my gear with me. This evening, fog was rolling by, there would be no sunset just a darkening of the daylight. So I walked empty handed. Half way ’round the pond proper is a spillway, bridge and this view of Butler’s Mudhole. Much tree damage had happened due to the last 2 storms. The caretaker’s clean up included brush cutting around and under an old, damaged willow to a dry bit of grass by the property edge. Stepping there to photo this view I knew I had a new painting to do. Having raced back to the house/studio to get my paints, I set up quickly and worked down from the horizon starting with the hedge and little bathhouse with my largest brush. Landscapes are fairly quick to paint, if you think about them for a minute. Most brush movement is horizontal, stopping only to clean brush and mix and change colors. The one thing which stops a quick landscape is a strong vertical item in the scene, requiring cutting in around the object and thus ceasing the flow of brushwork. The bathhouse, the only vertical, was tiny and did not slow me down. I saved the sky until last, in case it caught a blush of color as the sun set off in the fog. Canada Geese arrived in “v” formations looking for a place to bed. I held my ground until last light when geese moved into pond and fog rendered me invisible…