This image of Arizona was a fun location and painting for me. It brings together so many thoughts feelings visual images. I had always wanted to go to Arizona since I was in college and saw my first issue of Arizona magazine. It seems to me that the dessert offered so many possibilities that I could not find home in Ohio. This past year when our USTA tennis team went to Nationals it gave me that opportunity I had been yearning.
I took many pictures but this one really sung out with what I was feeling and seeing on my visit. It also brought to mind the paintings of Paul Cézanne and his mountain that I really enjoy.
Arizona Mountain, 18 x 24 inches
Working from the patterns of the darks I painted in an interpretive drawing with a large brush, trying to simplify a complicated landscape into shapely forms, patterns and design. Varying the color of the drawing to help emphasize the space.
Then I was onto all palette knife painting. I tried to move the color from the more muted colors of the distance to the foreground, allowing the eye to be able to concentrate on some areas and less detail and more abstraction in other areas as the eye really sees. Light was a big part of this painting and keeping to the more high key colors as an Impressionist painter would.
I am looking forward to a return visit to Arizona in June 2012 when I will be instructing a workshop at the Sedona Arts Center.
