Afternoon Gathering

Oil on linen, in my design for this painting, I sketched where the women and geese would be, then took my van about 200 feet down my dirt driveway, to view this landscape! And I did the entire landscape in the late afternoon, to have both great passages of sunlight, played against the deeper shadows of the night to come! And then returned to my small studio (about a 4x4 foot space!) and discovered the figures and their beauty to play against the backdrop of my wooded and the grasslands on my property!

It was a wonderful piece to work all my art principles with: light agains dark, warm agains cool, detail against quiet passages. All on my desire to lead the viewer on a quiet journey from the start on the left, across to the shadowed figures and the geese that accompanied them!

On the smaller "value areas" of allowing some geese to almost blend into its background, to those catching the sun's light, to their movement of their long graceful necks to their almost hiding their bodies from the viewer...it was a true adventure for me.

I've always thought of music, when I paint, how there are full notes, and half notes, and groups of notes...so also with painting: where something starts and ends, what is grouped together, and what is separate...what is simple or complex in it's expression. Each element ads to the "music" of any painting, if you but the time and interest "to listen"!!