Provisional title, it might be called "On The Edge"...
This is really the first painting to properly come out of my recent tour of the US National Parks in the South West for my solo show next year at the Abend Gallery. I loved the vast scale of the landscapes I saw particularly on the road between the various parks and loved the vast skies that hung over these landscapes. I don't know how/why the contrast between the blue sky and the white clouds was so intense there but I took loads of reference shots of them as we drove around. This painting is all about that contrast and scale which I hope to get across although this location does not actually exist and is an amalgam of three different locations plus imagination and invention. I'm fascinated by how people live in relatively hostile environments somehow clinging on despite a lack of water, power and shelter from the relentless sun. You see individual houses or communities way out of town in the parched hills and land living in self-made buildings with seemingly no viable income source at least not from the land but every one of them have a car or truck parked nearby without which I am sure they could never survive. Truly living on the edge...
This is the first pass on the tonal underpainting using my usual mix of Burnt Sienna and Dioxazine Purple thinned with Liquin and applied with a brush and rag. I will give it a second pass tomorrow.
Oil on canvas 31 1/2" x 12".
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