Finished just this week, I had to wait a year to get the information that I needed to complete this painting. Our anniversary is in November and having gone to Mineral Point last year, I got a look at this scene one sunny morning at the south part of town on the Darlington Road. Darlington is probably twenty miles south. What I was lacking is info on the left side of the canvas in the shadows. I spent time getting that the way I wanted it and spent some time developing the center and the tree on the right and them all of a sudden it was done. I've experienced that many times, that a painting is finished "all of a sudden" or sooner than anticipated. My favorite part of doing this painting is the right side where the sunlight and shadows is done in an impressionistic way with broken color.
Mineral Point is in the southwest part of Wisconsin where the farms are on hilly ground. One of my absolutely favorite books is The Land Remembers, by Ben Logan, a writer who grew up near there and now lives in Viroqua, WI. He's from a Norwegian family and grew up learning all the tasks on the farm when they still used horses for much of the work. I taught a block (a three weeks period of study on one subject) about farming using The Land Remembers to teach from. Of course, I added some talk about modern farming methods later. Anyhow all of this background only makes one a better painter.
No comments:
Post a Comment