Tree houses, La Montagne

Tree houses is a painting done in La Montagne, a small village on top of the old volcanic mountain next to St. Denis the major city on isle de la Reunion. In the scene, you are looking across a deep gorge that runs down the side of the mountain, the houses have been built up along the side of the gorge and then down in the valley. I was sitting on the edge of the road on the other side of the gorge. What inspired me most, besides the amazing way that they build houses on the mountain-side, but also the colours... all of the greens and yellows and how they play together was really special.

In some cases it is smart to paint the 'essence' of what you are seeing rather than exactly what you see, in this case the sky was actually a little overcast, and I wanted to make sure the viewer of the painting would still get the same feeling that I got when I was there. To do that, each colour has been enhanced a little more, embellished perhaps, the greens are close to what comes from the tube, and the startling yellow is too. I played up the reds a bit too in order to give the complementary contrast to the trees. The other key here was to keep the details a bit loose, to give a sort of in-the-wild feeling to it...



5x7" cold press, 2011