Green Canopy
Oil on canvas, 48  x 72 inches
In the studio, $13,500 framed
 
About this oil:
I have been intrigued by this composition of a line of trees at a creek revealing a dense forest beyond. This is the largest painting I have done that captures that idea.
 
The oil began as trees with very sparse foliage but that wasn’t very effective for this scale so I shifted to made the trees fuller. The background was in place but now it was reduced by a third.
 
At that point, I let it rest and worked on other projects. It remained on one of the easels so I could see it everyday. About a week later the good solution presented itself.  It was the end of a painting session with another oil and I was about to clean up the palette with a big selection of greens laid out. 
 
Looking over at this large oil in progress, I could see that adding more variations to the greens and blues would create complexity and make the artwork far more interesting. 
 
Often, paintings in progress seem to develop a life of their own, demanding one thing and rejecting another. This one eventually shifted from being a frustrating puzzle into a rewarding conversation. It came together naturally in the end, shaped by leftover colors from another work still in progress.