Vermont - Springtime

"The Spring Thaw - Waitsfield, Vermont" (18"X24", Oil on Canvas, $800)

Unlike the last two paintings on this blog, this was from a trip to Vermont that took place in the early Spring, rather than the Fall. This shows Tina, looking into the rushing water as the sun filters through the unseen trees in the upper left, and bathes her in its light. I really like the way this one turned out. It's actually my favorite of the 'Vermont Series' that I've blogged about lately. I think the light came out looking really shiny, and the water has good motion in it. The whole picture is thickly painted, except in the shadows, just like it should be. That's a principle of oil painting that I sometimes forget.

The composition revolves around a diagonal cross formed by the water flow. It runs into the picture from the upper and lower left, as well as the lower right. It runs downstream and out of the painting, towards the upper right. The visual focus is just to the right of the center of the picture, with its bright white foamy water contrasting sharply with Tina's dark jacket.

There's a mood of solitude in the painting that works well for me. I can imagine the viewers of the picture relating to the 'viewer' in the scene, staring into the swirling water; feeling the warmth of the sun while still needing to wear a thin Spring jacket; thinking of nothing. It seems to be almost hypnotic, or at least meditative. Swirling water and sunshine does that to me.

There's little bits of green coming in around the stream. I'm sure that as the summer wears on, the bits of green turn into tall, thick tussocks of grass and weeds. We've never actually made a trip to Vermont in the summer. The summer is for our trips to Maine and Lake Sebago.

I don't know what the set of wooden stairs is for. You can see that they really lead nowhere except down to the water that runs really thin in the winter, and then rushes and swirls like it does here, during the Spring thaw.