Range Road Painting

Range Road painting

Range Road. oil on canvas. 38 x 54 inches. March 22nd - 26th 2005. Sold

Private collection of Derek Carlisle - Ottawa Canada

Range Road.
Oil on canvas. 38 x 54 inches. March 22 - 26th 2005.

I choose this location for a couple of primary reasons: the road of should I say the painted lines in the intersection interested me greatly, the contrast of the road and the park, the flags and how their colors interacted with the trees. It was also late March and there was still a great deal of snow in the park. Most of the street locations had dirty snow, no snow, or only a little snow off to the edge of the sidewalks. I wanted to make the most of the winter. The road or incline in the vanishing point make this composition distinctive.

It was a very blue sky that day. Not a single cloud. The rays of the sun were very strong. I forgot to wear a hat and sun screen, so needless to say my forehead was like a tomato by the end of the day.

I wanted to include the sun in this painting, but it was positioned too high in the sky.

I did not park my equipment under a street light. And throughout the day I spoke to too many pedestrians. In retrospect I spoke to too many people for more than I should have. Not wishing to be rude and much to my regret I mismanaged my painting time. I was unable to complete this painting on the location and had to resume working on it three days later in the studio. I did not wish to paint this painting in the studio, but it was raining, and thus I could not return to outside to Range Road under a wet sky.

So I worked from the information already on the canvas, memory, drawings, and photographs. But to be honest I mostly worked from the information already on the canvas and improvisation. For the first few hours in the studio I really struggled to motivate myself, but once the paintings was all wet and active I really jumped into the canvas and the clock disappeared.