Quiet Side (2012, oil on canvas)

This big painting (34 x 40) is based on a drawing that I did last summer on Mount Desert Island. This was one of those paintings that took a very long time to bring to completion. I worked on it, off and on, for months, continually adjusting the colors of the trees, sky, road and houses, without referring back to the original drawing but focusing instead on the internal relationships of the painting itself. The painting has quite a dense surface, from the many layers of paint build up. I brought it up to the University of Maine in Presque Isle for an exhibition of my work back in February, mostly just to get it out of the studio so I'd stop messing with it. Of course, after I'd left it there, I kept having these compulsions to get it back so I could work on it some more. However, once the show was hung and I was able to see it in the Reed Gallery at the University, which is a very large room that allowed me to see the painting from a much greater distance than my studio space allows, an important consideration for a painting this size, I was happy with it. I really like the contradiction between the sense of space receding into the image caused by the use of perspective and the insistence on the surface of the canvas by the build up of thick, textural paint.