Size does matter: style can transfer to larger formats

"Up in the Sycamores before the Spring Bud" -- $400; if you wish to purchase this 20x24 inch oil on canvas painting, see http://www.avonwaters.com/, contact us or click on the Etsy.com button on the right of this blog.

I've finally figured out a way to convey the style and textural richness that I create with my smaller works into larger sizes. While in Bogota Colombia, I bought some interesting small and oddly shaped palette knives.

Up until now my style has been schizophrenic, my smaller pieces having a heavy impasto and my larger pieces having more broad thin paint. More recently I managed to be able to add interest to the areas that had of broad color by adding brush strokes of a small brush on its side, but this painting is truly a break through because it uses the heavy impasto of the palette knife that I use in the smaller paintings using the pallet knives from South America. They create a brush-like pattern when held one way and can create the familiar tonal smear when used more broadly.

The obvious revealed: exaggerating light

"Dead Pine in the Woods" -- $140; if you wish to purchase this 9x12 inch oil on canvas painting, see http://www.avonwaters.com/, contact us or click on the Etsy.com button on the right of this blog.

This painting is of a dead pine tree I found in the woods at the Mississinewa Lake recreation area in Indiana. Forty years ago, I remember riding in the back of the car into this area as the dam was being built. The houses were abandoned but not yet torn down to make way for the new flood control reservoir.

Had I not made those trips, I would have not been able to recognize the significance of this pine tree and several other pine trees that were in the middle of a thick woods. This is really the reminisce of what used to be someone's home and the pine was part of landscaping around the circular drive. In the woods I came upon a slight clearing. The circular shape told me that this pine was once the landscaping in the center.

The style I picked was once again the use of a palette knife. The challenge was creating contrast. In the deep woods, the light is very subtle and this painting exaggerates the light source to create more contrast and interest.

Using color to create depth perception

"Fence row" -- $140; if you wish to purchase this 9x12 inch oil on canvas painting, see http://www.avonwaters.com/ contact us or click on the Etsy button on the right.

This is an experiment in perception using my love of intersecting plains. Here, a row of trees creates a natural divider or fence row between two small open fields. Behind these horizontal planes is a vertical plane of trees greening in the spring and bathed in light.

The use of the cooler blues with the lavender creates the depth perception I wanted. It looks easy, but in reality it is very difficult to get the fields to recede against the much warmer and more intense greens of the trees. To do this, I have had to play with the color saturation by graying the paints and using small amounts of white. Then there's a yellow green scumbled over the lavenders and pinks.