These are two new pieces I recently completed, both 12 ” square canvasses. They are in the same vein as several other paintings I have completed recently and featured here on the blog.
As I’ve stated before, these pieces are for me all about shapes and forms and color, more so than about an actual depiction of place. I want to clarify that the feeling and sense of place that is created in these pieces is important to me. But it is something that comes about as a result of the way forms and color fall together, rather than a premeditated plan for the composition.
The canal in these pieces is very important with that bright blue counterpoint to the red of the roofs and the way it bisects the village. I have tried using a more subtle color in the canal but that blue pop! makes each painting stand out.
I have considered keeping these pieces together as a set, which is something I have done in years past, but I probably will not this time.
I had an interesting experience with a set of 3 very small paintings that were sold 11 or 12 years ago. They were tiny landscapes, only about an inch and a half square in size. They were, like the paintings above, not of any specific location but like many of my landscapes, influenced by the area around my home. There is a spot on the way to Ithaca called Connecticut Hill that has an interesting look and feel that I often think of when I’m painting.
I met the buyer of this particular set one day at the Principle Gallery in Alexandria, VA as I was delivering some work and we spoke about the paintings. He told me that he loved the way they reminded him of an area near he went to college. I asked him where he had went. He said Cornell, in Ithaca. I asked him where this place was he had described.
He said Connecticut Hill.
He didn’t know that I was from near there when we spoke and there was little in those tiny pieces that would make me say they were of that place. Just the feeling…
Redtree Times 