This is another painting from Sandy Flats--at the intersection with Harvestwood. At the time we were in a drought, and the fields looked golden in the hot summer sun, but what caught my eye were the strips of bright green in the field past the road--a burst of life in a dry land. The sky was very hazy with it's smokey blue tone, which offset the field so well. I had parked the ol' red Toyota on the side of the road and set up my easel and worked the composition there, but ended up reworking the colors in the studio to my liking. Often I will do that--not that the actual scene isn't interesting enough, just that it's fleeting, and I make enough references and notes to myself to recapture in the studio what struck me in the field, and it allows me to play a little more with color but also be true to the overall "feel" of the landscape.
Here again is my fascination with the idea of a path to be taken, a road to be traveled, a journey to be made-- often coming from shadow to light. About a month ago I went back to this part of the road, and it now looks completely different. Where a bony fence once poked itself out of the earth is now overgrown with vines and bushes, with the fields greener and much heartier than they had been when I first painted them. Oddly enough, I felt no desire to paint the scene as it is now.
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