Introducing my painting:
Good Night Pine.

7.11.7

You know, it never gets dark in Houston.  And sometimes the sky looks all orange when it's nighttime- Something to do with the lights reflecting off of the clouds I suppose.  Anyway, one night I was walking my dog and as she was doing her business, I looked up, and was struck by the design of the shadowy pine tree in front of me and the beauty of the lighted squares glowing in the distant building behind it.  So the next night I brought my camera and needless to say, I took some very dark photos of the scene.   I didn't have much to look at as I painted this so I returned to the spot every night and I tried to memorize it: each color and shape.  As you can guess it didn't look exactly like this, but I think that I captured the essence of what made me take notice of the scene in the first place. And by-the-way, just like the Impressionist painters back in the day, I didn't use a drop of black paint for this- only dark greens and browns and blues and purples!

As I painted this I thought a lot about the artists Tom Thomson and Vincent Van Gogh's work.  Tom, my Canadian "friend", this is an ode to your beautiful forest paintings and Vinny,  I thought of you as I made the night sparkle, unfortunately there are no starry's in my skies but  the smog makes a nice evening covering, if I do say so myself. 

See this painting in progress here.

Detail of Painting.