Twice a year the gallery where i take my painting lessons offers their “6 x 6” show. Anyone in the community can purchase a wooden 6” x 6” and then do whatever artistically you choose. Final products get entered into a show, with entries for sale to the public.

Over the past several years for this exhibit i have painted bird houses a few times, often in snow. This time i decided to do an actual bird. My choice is a female cardinal. She has lovely color and stands out against her snowy background.

Last summer i was in Spain, near the north coast, for a photography workshop. One night we stayed in a tourist home that was located near open fields. the area was near the water but not on it. Just across the street from our place was this group of deserted buildings, which for some reason i found captivating and very much wanted to paint. Until this week, when i was close to finishing the painting, i had no idea of what to call them. It turns out they are called “horreros”, or “paneras”, depending on the area in which they are found. The elevated one of the three is a granary — to store grain. It is apparently built in the way it is in order to keep rodents and pests away. The lower buildings might have been used to store tools.

The morning on which i took the reference photo was overcast. for the painting i wanted to liven up the colors. I also wanted to place some emphasis on the view through and behind the buildings in order to de-emphasize a bit of the prominence of the elevated building. With that in mind, i made the painting’s weather be sunny, and tried to indicate where the light was coming from, which allowed me to

highlight the opening through the buildings.

If it seems as though the building on the right is missing some walls, that is, in fact the case. Only the front wall remains; the sides and back walls are long gone.