Question Landmark

In this small abstract I was going for one simple object set against a stark baron landscape, similar to Bottle Sunset posted a few weeks ago. The background was supposed to be a desert but it looks more like a sea. My favorite aspect of the work is the rich blue colour in the Landmark. The object is backlit by a sunset, but the shadow still retains a luminous quality. I kept the shadows warm and luminous by laying down a bright red wash and covering it with a cool green/blue. Directional brush strokes are commonly used in oil painting, best exemplified by Cezanne, Monet, and the more contemporary Canadian painter Tom Thompson. They were all oil painters, and it is a lot easier to make the brush strokes visible in oil painting as compared to watercolour, however in this work I attempted to create some directional brush work in the foreground grass element. To do this I let the colour wash of the grass dry, and then on top I put on fairly wide brush strokes loaded with colours. The colour of the directional brush stroke varied to match the blue shadows or the warmer light. As you can see, the actual direction of the strokes make a sweeping S turn which helps bring the viewers eye from the foreground into the central Landmark object. 

 Question Landmark, 7.5 x 11" cold press 2009 (No. 1474)