Barns, Walls, & Rust

Just about all of the Barn & Rust images come from the Shenandoah Valley in Virginia or the adjacent Pendleton County, West Virginia, but I am on the lookout for abandoned structures and vehicles everywhere I travel. They have become obsessive images for me, and in painting them, I find I am incorporating the more experimental methods used in painting Abstracts. The Walls are a new obsession. I find them wherever I travel, especially outside the region where I live. But the attraction is the same  - geometrics, textures, and a suggestive history.

In the past, when painting in a realistic fashion, I used more traditional painting methods: oil, palette knife, and brushes. But since becoming entranced with cold wax as a medium, I have largely switched to it from the more common oil mediums, which changes the surface somewhat. It gives the painting more of a texture, and it also encourages more mark-making, as in the Abstracts. 

Barns were a familiar subject when I was more involved in plein air painting, but they were generally part of a surrounding scene. These more recent efforts hone in on the structures themselves and the geometric shapes formed by windows, doors, strips, and sections of wood paneling. And they explore the textures created by peeling paint. Walls provide a very similar attraction. Some suggest an historical context; some are more contemporary.

It is the same with rusty vehicles. I find myself focusing on the color layers of the peeling paint. The surrounding scenery is merely backdrop. 

All of these are studio paintings (not plein air) because they take a great deal of time. I might begin the basic drawing on site (en plein air), but then move indoors. Light – a wonderful focus of plein air painting – is less a subject in these works. Because plein air works must be done fairly quickly (the light changes fast!) and all of the necessities must be portable, they tend to be small. These works are larger, and the focus is not on the transient quality of light but on the more enduring qualities of color, texture, and composition.

The Barns, Walls & Rust works are all oil on panel, most framed with natural wood and black shadowbox. The occasional work that is unframed or framed entirely in black is so noted.