Mail Box

I like this theme of signs of human intervention within vast often hostile natural landscapes, the South Western States being particularly suited to this theme. This is out in the boondocks of New Mexico with a rusting mail box by the side of the road in the middle of nowhere, a small path leads off at the left to an unseen shack, a bit of the road surface can be seen in the far right corner. These pictures are kind of bittersweet in that it shows the struggle against Nature of people to live in such inhospitable environments made more so by the approaching storm... on the other hand it is kind of a celebration of people being able to do this in the first place.
Originally I had a couple of telegraph poles in the middle of the landscape breaking the horizon but I decided that they distracted you away from the main focus of the picture, the lonely mail box so I painted them out, being able to get away with it compositionally as it is approximately a third of the way in still breaking the horizon.
One more in my The Big Sky series. Oil on linen 30" x 20".
There is a step-by-step progress through this painting including the colours I used in previous posts on this blog.