Living the Poem (oil on canvas, 2013)

(Collection of the Artist)
I've been thinking a lot lately about the color green and how it's the most difficult color to work with. Here in northern Maine, the Spring is filled with myriad greens but I've always found it challenging to capture that "greenness" in an oil painting. The tendency is for the greens to either be too saturated (i.e. too green) or not green enough. I've been looking through my dozens of art books over the past few months and it seems that most of my favorite artists, with the exception of Cezanne and contemporary painter Stuart Shils, avoided making paintings with an overall green tonality. I did some initial color studies for this painting and it was originally going to be in a yellow and orange key, but somehow during the process of painting it, the greens crept in and I found myself up to the challenge. And it was a challenge, especially getting the colors of the barn, which, although not green, hold the entire painting together, just right. After three days of continually mixing colors, painting, scraping off and repeating, I am happy with the result.