One of the strangely interesting things I regularly experience is discovering additional subjects the longer I work in a given location.
Once I get the painter’s eye in gear after working on one motif, it’s typical for me to step away from the painting that’s occupying me, and turn around to clear my head for a moment only to find something else of interest that I hadn’t noticed earlier. But this is only the case when I’m painting/sketching…I can’t get that same experience just showing up somewhere if I haven’t tuned in to the place and spent some significant time actually working. The work itself puts me into an extra-receptive mindset where things appear to me differently than at other times.
Forest study, 11 x 14″ oil
This is what lies directly behind me on the large Waimanalo piece I’ve posted previously. One day, I simply “noticed” this while working and came back early the next morning when it receives light and made this study.
Now, I ask myself how I could have possibly missed it….but I did, and often do. It takes time to get into the spirit of the place and I suppose it’s part of the reason that some painters eventually spend much of their careers working in the orbit of a relatively small geographical area. The right light and an open mind can do a lot.
I’ll give this another hour or two of work, and consider it as reference for a larger piece, perhaps a studio painting. That’s how it works, one thing leads to another.
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