Vermont - Farms and Horses

"Autumn Grass - Waitsfield, Vermont" (18"X24", Oil on Canvas, $750)

This is another in the series of paintings done after a trip to Vermont (in the Fall, in this case) and my desire to get back into painting by way of such memorable moments.

This is actually the same horse and field as in the previous post, except that it was taken from a much different and closer angle. Needless to say, the horse didn't have much of an interest in me or the fact that I was interested in him (or her, as the case may be), taking the time to slowly make its way across the field of quickly yellowing and drying grass.

I feel this is a successful painting, in that the focus of interest is squarely on the horse. The background, for all its detail, is thinly painted and somewhat washed out so that the horse, with its thicker and richer color, stands out - almost to the point of looking 3-D. This type of atmospheric effect is fun to do and a bit startling to achieve. I also like the way the slope of the hill in the background peaks right behind the horse, making the eye travel in from the left and right, stopping at the dark mass of the animal.

The grass in the foreground is underlaid with blocks of slightly darker color and then filled in with many strokes to make up the closely cropped surface. The detail in the grass is less and less as the foreground becomes the background, which helps with the illusion of depth.

The main point here is that the quiet and calm of the scene is driven home by the serenity of the horse and the limited color palette which harmonizes the painting. Let me know what you think of this, or any of the other paintings that I've done and written about on this blog.