Sanctuary Of The Sun

As the sun sets a lone figure has walked through the ruins of an ancient temple complex and performs an ancient rite to the sun disc in the Temple of Apollo at the top of the hill. All is quiet and still in the warm, misty air, just occasionally one can hear the muffled words of an incantation previously thought lost to the world drifting towards us.
Another painting hopefully heading for Illuxcon in October, "Sanctuary Of The Sun" was influenced by the colours of Sydney Long's "Spirit Of The Plains" but has something of Caspar David Friedrich in there too, maybe it's the arch on the hilltop temple. As the composition rests on the centrally placed arch and sun I have tried to break up the symmetry by offsetting other elements against it as well as having movement within the composition whereby the eye is led from the temple ruin at left onto the broken column that then leads around to the way up to the hilltop and the figure below the arch and sun. I chose an analogous palette based around red that went from oranges and yellows to pinks and violets (with a guest colour of yellow green)....and the subtle light blue in the sky. Oil on canvas 23 1/2" x 19 1/2". There is a step-by-step progress though this painting in previous posts on this blog.