Vineyard Sentinel (2020)

Size matters

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My landscape work started with some prominent vineyard scenes, and moved to some tree-focused paintings. I suppose this is where these two threads meet

Vineyard Sentinel (2020) 24x36” oil on panel

I ran across this majestic eucalyptus tree in the Napa Valley area while taking reference photos for what was intended to be a different painting that I haven’t moved much further on. What struck me most about this tree was the feeling I got standing in front of it. That’s a difficult thing to communicate in paintings, which can be viewed small, and will be viewed small by most who view it—including on your computer screen, like now.

It’s one of the ways original art is something unique. Anyone who stands in front of the painting will experience it quite differently.

Color study, 6x8” acrylic on canvas

I started by painting a small color study, in acrylic. I used this as a way of shifting the visuals away from the merely photographic, but it’s hard to immediately hit some of the depth of color that is easier to get in oil. So this took me about half way to where I wanted to go.

If this had been painted on the smaller side, say, 12x18” it might have made a fine image, but by increasing the size to 24x36”, I felt I was more able to get a sense of scale into this. Naturally, it could have benefited from being even twice that size, but at that point you’re almost competing with actual trees!

In-progress. It seemed more reasonable to render out the sky gradation entirely and then paint the tree over it, than to try to cut around the tree, and cut holes into the foliage. That is a tried-and-true method, but it works best when the detail is generalized versus my more fussy rendering here.

This is one of the odd things now, in a world where an artist’s images can travel far and wide digitally as well as in print, versus back in the day when a painting might only be seen at a show or salon, be purchased and then never be known by many others in the world for many years, if ever. Collectors often send me notes after receiving a painting, expressing how the scans or printed work never do the original justice. That’s true in the detail, glow and depth of color, for sure.

In-progress. I grayed out the sky in a second pass before beginning to establish the foliage. That darker grayed out sky was key to this painting’s mood. The foliage itself took multiple passes, two can be seen here. You’ll note no smaller branches are really there yet.

But scale can make a huge difference as well. It can on the miniature size: I’ve seen some paintings that were very small and so intricate and beautiful that they were lovely like a hummingbird is lovely. I’ve also stood before the epic landscapes of Thomas Moran and Albert Bierstadt—works I’d known from print for years. But standing in front of them, their massive scale is overwhelming in a way a great reproduction can never be. There is a physical presence to original art that can be increased through scale, when the image itself lends itself to it.

So, this painting. It’s one where most of you may enjoy it here as a digital JPG. But for the few who visited my home and saw it, and for owner and their friends and family, it will be another thing entirely. It’s not huge, as painting goes . But it’s large enough that it starts to communicate by virtue of its size.