Hicks Valley Horses

acrylic on canvas, 12" x 24"

I used a reference photo I had taken last summer on Hicks Valley Road, in the countryside west of Petaluma.  The paint horse in the foreground had risen up out of the landscape like a blossom in the desert.  I spent two hours working on it with a palette knife, then took a lunch break.  But now, after stepping away, I feel that if I go back in there, the painting may change radically, and perhaps not for the better.  As it stands, the landscape is simplified and abstracted, and in harmony with itself, something I can only achieve working alla prima, which is to say completing a painting in one session.  The way I mix colors varies from session to session, and so a reworking of one area can result in a pasted-on look, which causes a chain reaction throughout, and then you're cooked, and the painting is DOA. Still, I may not be able to resist toying with this one later, even though I feel it has a bit of life in its current, unfinished state.  In a nutshell, I am not ashamed to walk away from this one as is.