Madison Windmills, 8x10"-Sold

My plan was to start another painting based on the previous one, but this photo from the same area begged me to paint it first.

For several years I had seen the windmills in the distance and was very curious as to what they looked like up close, so last year my daughter and I went to Madison county in search of them. Not only did we take lots of pictures but also fell in love with the countryside.

As a believer in renewable energy, I plan to include windmills in some future paintings. The ones here are barely visible on the left.

Cumulus Cloud, 8x10" -Sold

The variable weather we've been having has gotten me in the mood to paint skies.

This small painting took me longer to finish than I had expected. Somehow, clouds always look so inviting and easy to paint but once I start painting them I realize that it's not so easy after all to represent their three dimensionality.

I've just got another idea for a different version of this... I'll better get to work on it!

A Fast Moving Front, 11" x 17"

This painting is based on the same reference photo that I used for Distant Pond.
While a larger format allows for more detail, it can also make things more difficult if you want to keep it loose. Perhaps that's why it took me over three weeks to finish it. Several times I thought it was done only to come next day and erase the previous day's work. I even added a dirt road -and still think it would have been a good idea, but it did not come out the way I wanted, so maybe another time, another painting.

I'm becoming more aware of how much one can learn from painting different versions of a particular scene. To avoid repetition you are always asking yourself what to add or remove to make the painting work.

The Rock Garden, en plein air, 9" x 12"

My friend MaryBeth and I went painting this morning to her next-door neighbor's garden. She had told me about this garden before but I didn't imagine it had so much to offer!

This scene with black-eyed Susan, mullein, and globe thistle, was the first one that caught my attention, so after scouting for a while I figured I needed some practice painting foregrounds and this one offered the perfect setting.

From the very beginning my goal was to practice, not to produce a finished painting; that took so much pressure off and I'm happy with the results.