Commit to the feeling not the photo

So I have been working on this 24x30” canvas off and on for some time. It was actually based on a series of photos I took on a drive not far from my home. I was after a particular feeling I had witnessing a warm, glowing evening sky in Hanover County filled with spectacular clouds.

It is oh too easy though to get lost in the details, and that is exactly what I did! The clouds became too busy. The highlights lacked color. The landscape below needed something. Ultimately I took a big ole squeegee over the whole thing and scraped the paint and blurred a lot of the details out. I took an oil pastel to it. I greatly simplified the clouds and kicked up the color a bit. None of that completed it, but it felt good and liberating, if still unresolved.

At that point I just took it off the easel and faced it against the wall, deciding to just move on to other pastures for a while. I came across it again the other day as I was cleaning my studio, and looked at it with fresh eyes. “Hey that really might be worth another go," I thought. I scoured my photo references for inspiration and found these grazers lit up with a golden light. I thought they would be perfect to lead the eye into the painting without detracting too much from my big sky.

“Gilded Grazers,” Oil on linen, 24x36” (SOLD) ©Jennifer E Young

When I paint landscapes from photos in the studio, (which is really quite often these days due to my requirements at home) I try to go more for the feeling than the photo(s). This is my chance to play with color and composition and not be a slave to recording what the photograph has already attempted. I really ended up having fun with this piece. I enjoyed the play of colors and painterly energy. I enjoyed being willing to lose what I had done in order to make it better. And finally, I appreciated the cows for bringing it all home.

Butter and Buttercups

Each year in early spring the rural counties in Virginia are blanketed with sunny yellow buttercups, and each year I vow to get outside and paint them in the field. More often than not though, I miss their brief appearance for one reason or another. It’s a busy time at my daughter’s school, or I am preparing for a show, or moving, etc., etc., etc.) This year I got lucky, thanks to the sweet tip I received from my husband, who spotted this location on his morning drive to work. 

"Butter and Buttercups", Oil on linen, 9x12" ©Jennifer E Young

This dairy farm is about 20 minutes from my home in Ashland, out in rural Hanover County just past historic Hanover Tavern. I started out painting the barn and fields, cowless, with a plan of perhaps adding the cows later from photos I took on site. Just toward the end of my session though, the cows obliged, and ambeled over long enough for me to paint a suggestion of their general shape and position. I decided to leave them as I painted them in the field, as I felt the handling was consistent with the rest of the painting.