Kittrell, NC Barn (oil on canvas, 2008)

This painting was based on a photograph that my friend Ross took a couple of years ago in North Carolina, where he lives. I generally don't like to work from photos, but I liked the idea of the tree shadows being cast on this old barn and since we had record breaking snow accumulation where I live this year (over 200 inches!) and 8 foot high snow banks everywhere, which made working outside virtually impossible, I decided to work from this image. I did a lot of charcoal drawings to work out the composition and then a few pastel studies to play with different color ideas, none of which I was happy with. I went in to this painting not knowing what any of the colors were going to be and, as a result, most of it got painted over three or four times over the course of the last 5 weeks before I was finally happy with it.