When I’m close to bringing a painting to the finish line I like to take a long, careful look. After years of painting, and years of looking at paintings, I recognize four elements that I’ve come to recognize as important, if not essential for me. Those four are: thick paint against thin paint, warm colors next to cool colors, light against dark, and soft edge next to hard edge.
Even on a tiny painting like this they make things work for my eye.
Let's keep in touch,
Marshall
I believe it’s never an unwise decision for anyone involved in a creative endeavor to, from time to time, get out of their comfort zone and see what happens! I’ve taken a leap out of my comfort zone recently by beginning work on paintings for an upcoming small works show at Ventana Fine Art. I love to paint big!
These new paintings are a mere 12 inches by 12 inches. We’ll see if I can confirm the well travelled saying “small is beautiful.”
Let's keep in touch,
Marshall
Updated: Mar 5
I recently ran into an old friend of mine who is a wonderfully dedicated fruit grower. He just might be the hardest working guy I know. For part of the year! He has hundreds of trees on the east shore of Flathead Lake just south of my studio. I mentioned that I’d done a painting of his orchard. He mentioned that he didn’t know that. So I thought I’d post a picture.
I was taken with the simple complementary colors of the scene. Red against green. Always effective. There you go Dan! What do you think?
Marshall
