'Almost There' - the new name for a 'Landscape'

Almost There (Landscape) 

24" X 30"  - acrylic on canvas - $450

I am so happy to post this painting and show how it evolved from a small watercolour study to the final rectangular version you see above. 

It is based on a very simple scene photographed from my car window (in which I was the passenger of course) several years ago. I liked the vertical dead trees, dark backdrop of woods, long grasses in the foreground and bright spots of colour in the photo and always felt I could do something with it. 

The first rendition was a watercolour study, presented in a square format, and very abstracted, focusing on the far background band of trees and splashy, colourful foreground, connected with some vertical lines suggesting the clump of trees in the photo. 

I really liked this study and used it as the basis for a larger (36"x36") acrylic canvas painting - you can see how similar they were. However, though I loved the abstraction and looseness of the acrylic work, I remained unsure as to next steps. I really wanted to just leave it as it was, but so much of the canvas was not painted and I felt that if I continued to just fill in un-painted areas I would probably lose what I liked. So, after many months I regret to say that I whited it out the painting. Oh well. 

Recently I decided to have another kick at painting this composition and abstracting it using colour and line, but this time changed the format to a horizontal rectangle, something inherently more suggestive of a landscape. This is stage one.

Then using black paint and a brush I made lots of calligraphic marks. Fun.

Then, added more paint and colour and finally finished the painting.

A great painting experience and i think, a successful result.

Cheers!