Summer Rain

8 x 12 Oil on Panel

When you live in Vermont you are surrounded by snow for a good part of the winter. White is everywhere. One day last February I had an intense desire for color. I pulled a small panel from the racks and decided to paint a landscape, a summer landscape. Storms have always fascinated me but are rather hard to paint from nature. There is the fear of being drenched at any moment as well as the fear of being struck by lightning. So I often watch storms from a safe and dry distance storing up information for just such a moment as this. The painting was there in my head, all I had to do was transfer it to the panel. No reference photo, no pencil drawing, no plein air sketch, just me and my memory and my imagination. It started as a great storm, dark on the horizon, clouds racing through the sky, trees bending in the wind. I worked on it for an hour or so from time to time over the next few weeks while continuing with my larger paintings. As the days passed by and my color anxieties eased so did the storm in my painting. The wind gradually died down, a bit of sun broke through, and the fierce storm turned into refreshing rain. But I still had that great storm in my head so I went back to the racks and out came a larger canvas.....