I realised a few nights ago that it was too limiting to be just focusing on old road signs and abandoned buildings for my locations for my Roadside America/The Big Sky series. "Groceries" makes a first move to expanding the scope to include themes that I was working on ten years ago, a more surreal, darkly humorous feel to the imagery when I was using a lot of threatening shadows in usually urban cityscapes.
This one is a halfway house to that direction in that I am combining an abandoned building with shadows rushing into the foreground from an unseen tree etc which hopefully gives it an edge of unease to what could otherwise just be a pretty picture. In fact that is what I am trying to avoid, painting pretty pictures. The slight change of direction will be more apparent in the next one, "A Perfect Day" which I started working on yesterday.
"Groceries" was quite tricky because all the lighting is invented and a lot of thought went into the colours I used to try and get it right - the colours remind me of old Kodachrome colour film which gives a slight nostalgia which I like as another ingredient to stir into the mix.
Oil on linen 30" x 20".
There is a step-by-step progress through this painting in previous posts on this blog.
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