60 Back Lit Trees (SOLD)

60 "Back Lit Trees" 8x8 oil on board, copyright Laura Gable

In his book "Landscape Painting", Mitchell Albala suggests that we paint landscapes from life, rather than from photographs. He likes to take black and white photos of outdoors and then re-imagine the colors. I've been working a bit with this concept, and yesterday's painting was done entirely from a black and white photo.

This painting came from a photo of a local sunset with it's misty tones, which I modified by bringing in more color, and lightening the back row of trees. The foreground trees were borrowed from another. I like the overall feel of this little painting--with all it's layered paint, reminiscent of van Gogh. Did you hear about the paintings where he was squeezing color right onto the canvas, during his frenzied period. Art restorers have taken tiny pins into his deep mountains of paint and discovered that they are still wet deep inside. Amazing.

Happy 60th painting. I think I'm getting on a roll here ... though I do feel like I have no life outside of painting. ;-)