Tree Trunks Along the Slough

oil on gessoboard, 12" x 6"

This palette knife painting was meant to be a study in pinks and browns, but as you can see, I strayed a bit from that idea.  It was done from a photo I had taken at Covelo Ranch in the spring, when the slough was full.  I liked seeing that one tree trunk in the foreground set against the others on the far shoreline of the slough.

The Slough in Spring

iPad painting, 10" x 14"

This was done from a photo I took at Covelo Ranch in the spring, when the slough was full.  Now it is completely dried up and you can walk across the bed to the field beyond.  I loved the subtle gray-greens set against the pink of the plum blossoms and their reflections in the brown water, with the charming little turquoise foot bridge in the distance.  

Iris Shoots Along the Slough

oil on hardboard panel, 8" x 10"

This little painting I started the other day at Covelo Ranch, thinking I'd work on it some more yesterday, but I had only brought two little palette knives with me.  Eventually, frustration overtook the project and I ended up wiping it.  Oh well, there's always another day, but I thought I'd memorialize it here, poor thing.  

I've been reading a large, fascinating tome about Vincent van Gogh entitled, "Van Gogh:  The Life," by Steven Naifeh and Gregory White Smith, and I've been letting my colors veer a bit from what is considered "correct," in search of my own sense of color harmony.  Van Gogh himself decried abstract painting, but in the last year of his life he loosened that view as his paintings veered ever closer to abstraction themselves.  I was attempting to do that here, with the turquoise grass in the upper left corner, simply because I found it so beautiful against the brownish water and linking it to two of the iris shoots next to the tree trunk.  I hope to explore this whole idea more in my paintings, but will need all the tools at my disposal for it.