MORNING LIGHT - ANZO BORREGO

Occasionally a painting comes back to the studio perhaps on its way to another gallery and this often gives me a chance to take another look at the work to see if I can make any improvements - such was the case with this one. Painted in a somewhat high key, I kept the colors light and bright just as I remembered them to be. The main focus is on the bushes and trees in the middleground and initially I had more foreground showing but felt that this was somewhat distracting. Since this didn't do much for the composition, I cut about two inches off the bottom and felt an immediate improvement. The sky as I remembered at that time was mostly clear and the clouds that I had put in initially were I felt a little weak so I made them a bit more obvious (although this is not so clear in the photo here). I also worked on the bushes slightly cleaning them up and adding a little more contrast to the shadowed side. And that was about it - no major reworking necessary! For me the pleasure in looking at paintings like this comes from the memories they evoke of travelling to SoCal and Arizona. The trip had a lasting impression on me and I'm sure I'll be painting more landscapes from the area. Morning light is an oil on canvas, size 7" X 14".