Cherry Point, Christmas Day 2

Cherry Point, Christmas Day 2. Oil on Canvas. 20" x 16".

What can I say about this painting? I love it.

It's been through several iterations, and I'll post an earlier version below so you can see the changes. I started it shortly after Christmas along with Cherry Point, Christmas Day 1 (love that too!) and Alder Grove, Cherry Point. The one above was challenging at first. I showed it to Ruthie V and she noticed that I'd placed a band along the back, to convey the top of the trees. Great catch, so I brought the sky down over that visual barrier and softened the trees in the background. I painted the sky again and repainted the trees over the sky, softening all the edges (that's the stage it was at below.) Then Deborah Paris in our Luminous Landscape class suggested I darken the path substantially and I did. That made all the deep shadows lay down and pop.

This painting is more saturated in deep color than a jpeg can convey. So saturated that I've been lost in the layers. I wake up at 4:30 picturing it, excited about painting it. At the same time, when I paint it I get disoriented. While the surface is one skin, it looks 3 dimensional up close and gives me the sensation of walking up stairs, and thinking there's one more stair at the top. The shadows are so deep I believe they're real.

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