"Rose Arbor" (oil on linen, 12" x 16") sold

sold

Reference photo

No, I didn't paint the picture outside.  In this heat?  No way!  A friend of mine who painted with me at Green Spring Gardens Park on Tuesday ended up in a hospital emergency room.  Please drink plenty of water and stay cool.

I took the reference photo at River Farm in Alexandria, VA exactly a month ago, and started the painting soon after.  But lots of things happened since; it got put aside.  Once the excitement is gone, it's hard to get back to that place.  Since leaving something unfinished goes against my "I am not a quitter" philosophy, however, I managed to complete "Peach Roses." 

As we are getting into the green-green-everywhere-green season, a landscape painter's task is to learn to mix many shades of greens--warm, cool, intense, grayed, dark, pale, etc.  I pushed back the distant pergola and the rest of  the right side of the painting by using lots of grayed violets.  For that reason, the painting is much easier to read than the photo, which tends to flatten space.  Now I am done with the darned thing, I can paint something else.  Yeah!

"Garden Statue" (oil on linen; 12 x 12") sold; "Rose Arbor" (oil on linen; 8" x 10")

"Garden Statue"
sold

"Rose Arbor" (oil on linen, 8" x 10")
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River Farm in Alexandria, VA used to be owned by George Washington; it is now the headquarters of the American Horticultural Society.  It is also beloved by plein air painters who are welcomed to add the artistic touch to the already enchanting landscape.  Sara Linda Poly's plein air class met there yesterday on a perfect spring day.  I painted "Spring at River Farm" at my favorite spot, looking at the stone statue of a young faun (or satyr, as the ancient Greeks would have called it) through the red-brick pergolas.

As you can see, I have already painted the same scene from a different perspective. What was funny is that my friends also painted their favorite scenes they had painted before: Charlotte painted the white manor house as she did the last year and Alice painted the azaleas against trees likewise.  We seemed to be obsessing over the same thing all over again!  This is something on which psychologists can shed light. 

"Rose Arbor" (oil on linen, 8" x 10")

click here to buy

It was in the low 70's a few days ago, and I got excited about an early spring, especially after I spotted snow drops blooming in my garden.  I shouldn't have.  We are back to winter today and I am back to day-dreaming about a mild spring weather in which I can paint outside.

I have been to George Washington's River Farm in Alexandria, VA many times, and every time I was enchanted by this scene with a series of brick pergolas.  The day when I painted the piece last year was my lucky day with perfect light and roses in bloom.  The roses were pink, but I changed them to white.  Why not?  It seemed to work better that way.  By the way, "Rose Arbor" is one of my favorite plein air paintings.