The Process Of Seeing And Interpreting

When I'm on my nature walks and I find something that inspires me, I take "grab shots" with my phone. I'm not trying to make beautiful shots; in fact, it's often better if I don't, because a painting is always best if a photo is used merely an inspirational jumping-off point. The artistic decisions I make when adapting photo references are largely a process of "distillation;" taking the essence and energy of that moment and using it as a building block. There are always dominant colors as well as subtle ones. For instance, I see a lot of purple in nature: in shadows, twigs, or the sheen on an otherwise black crow's feathers. Exaggerating these colors creates a more dynamic painting. I happen to love purple; you'll probably notice quite a lot of it in my paintings. (The example at left shows how the trees and shrubbery in the source photo had a bit of a purple cast; when I exaggerated this in my painting, it made a lovely combination with the fresh spring green. Much prettier than brown!)

The painting below was based on a late-winter walk where I saw a startling bank of bare rose hips. As you'll see in the photo reference, the sky that day was a pretty blue — which was a lovely experience in the moment. But I needed to make an artistic choice: would the painting be about the rose hips, or the sky? I had to pick one to concentrate on — otherwise, they would compete with each other. This is the distillation that one must do when preparing to paint. In this case, it was enough to concentrate on color and texture. A few trees create depth and context, but the finished painting was really about the excitement of the vivid red color popping up in a bare late-winter setting. Purple once again makes an appearance.