Highlights and highway"

Oil on gessobord

8"x10"

I got up this morning to work on a quick, loosely stroked landscape to cheer myself up. I have had a rough week and needed some focus time. The reference for this painting was from the highway while driving to Kansas City last weekend to see my art school daughter!!

Open Road

Open Road, oil on gessoed board, 24x18"

I've been working on this one for the last three days.  It is not one I felt rushed to finish, and allowed myself the time to think about attempting new things and changing others that I felt weren't working. The photo I worked from was taken on my trip last summer where we drove from Louisville to Colorado, Utah and New Mexico and saw non-stop beauty along the way. This was a simple highway scene, to contrast the grand-scale beauty within those states, but it was it's simplicity that brought me to it.  Sometimes the simplest things go unnoticed within the grand scheme of things. As Ghandi said, "Simplicity is the essence of Universality"

New River Highway

New River Highway, oil on gessobord, 5x7"

On the drive back from DC to Louisville, we decided to take a detour in West Virginia to cross the New River bridge. The New river, ironically, is one of the oldest river systems on the continent. It passes through an incredibly deep and beautiful gorge that, since the 70's, has become an outdoor playground with some of the best whitewater rafting, rock climbing faces, and camping areas in the eastern US. The state road leading to it has a steep trajectory with curving, converging lines. I took a rather bland photo from the drive and turned into this little interesting painting. Upon finishing it, I felt as if I had captured all the natural forces that one feels in this vast, ancient area.