Tuesday, April 13, 2010

In Back of an Empty House (oil on canvas, 2010)


(Private Collection)
This is the back view of an old house just north of the Houlton town line. I did a painting of the garage, viewed from the left of this painting, about a year and a half ago called "Halloween". This house has been empty and for sale since before we bought our place up here, four-and-a-half years ago, and it's really starting to fall into disrepair.
Once in a while a painting comes together fairly easily. This was not one of them. I worked on this for three weeks, returning to the subject many times, and scraping off and re-painting most of the picture two or three times. It's probably not apparent in this small jpeg (The painting itself is about 20 inches by 36 inches) but the surface shows a lot of the struggling and re-working that went into the process of creating it, which I rather like, as opposed to a slick, polished surface. Aside from appealing to me on a purely aesthetic level, I find that the "battle scars" on the painting capture the feeling of the subject matter.

4 comments:

Kay said...

I looked at the close-up and I love the texture all of your hard work produced...I love the light too, nice painting. I know of a dilapidated farm house in Redmond Utah that I am going to go paint...thanks for the inspiration

martinealison said...

Adorable maison et magnifique peinture. Tout parait paisible, peut-être un petit manque de vie... Pas dans votre peinture qui a une âme.

Zar Galstyan said...

Your paintings are beautiful, I love the way you capture light and your use of color is wonderful...great work!

Frank said...

Thank you for the nice comments and for taking the time to look at my work.