LJ and NJ

A few weeks ago i posted the third of my paintings based on a visit last fall to the South Island of New Zealand. the work didn’t feel quite right to me at the time i posted, but i decided to go ahead and post and then return to the painting when i had a better idea about where i needed to make improvements. Eventually i came up with some ideas and worked to get them down on canvas. Part of the problem with the original post — at least to me —was the way the foreground was placed, with so much prominence when it was not meant to be a focus of the painting. Another issue was the trees. I liked the way they came out but wasn’t crazy about their placement in perspective. Third, the field was pretty bare. While i wanted some attention to go to the light on the right-side mountain, i think i needed to spruce up that field with at least something in it.

It’s important to me that the viewer think about the painting as a stand-alone piece. I’m wanting with my work to move from exact copying of a scene/subject to an interpretation of what the scene feels like to me. In this case, although i do love painting cloudy days (it was pretty cloudy the day the photo was taken). i wanted to lighten this one up just a bit — but without destroying the feeling of open space and vastness.

In the two photos below, the top one is the one i posted in February. The bottom one is the newer one. I have purposely left out the reference photo this time (although you can find it easily enough) in order to decrease one-to-one comparisons of painting (s) with original setting .

11’ x 14” oil on panel (both)