2012
I have painted this area many times and keep going back to it when I need a jump start. After not painting for almost a year I decided that if I was to get back into the studio I needed an image that really stuck with me. I have painted this same spot with almost the same light from years earlier, but this had a different effect. I wanted to paint something with a long format and this nice wide valley running through the ravines in the Kalamazoo Nature Center fit well. That amazing light happens to go right down a long length of the creek at a certain time of day in a certain time of year. It's really a beautiful sight. I attempted about four distinctly different ways to paint this until I finally found my touch again, in a long and frustrating re-entry to painting. But in the end it turned out better than I could have imagined, and it seemed my brush painting days that I had left for the palette knife were back.