Every Day, oil on canvas, 26×40
Even though I’ve lived in the Pacific Northwest for over 30 years, I’m still in awe of the natural beauty of the landscape. It has provided me with thousands of great images from which I have painted a select few over the years. Sometimes they’re overpowering and I hold off painting them because of the sheer challenge of making a convincing painting.
The painting, Every Day, is a prime example of a tough painting assignment. It’s one that I’ve put off for over 10 years. I could call it an abstract in green because it’s so simple: a road, a cloud, trees and sky that beg to be explored. I was attracted to trying to paint only green values through the different hues, values and chromas. I found that the texture was more elusive to capture than the trees themselves.
The inspiration to capture this view stems from a love of traveling around and seeing the many moods and flavors of nature. This one was especially enticing because of the clumpy summer clouds that pulled my vision and made me curious about what’s around the next bend.
I relied on Hansa yellow and various blues to get clean green tones. I used quinacridone gold to paint the foreground grasses. The sky was based in pthalocyanine blue, yellow ocher and burnt umber. The road needed almost pure ultramarine blue for the shadow streaks, and they contrasted nicely to the manganese tones of the black top.