Car Seat Anyone? (Vanishing Landscapes)

I've been inspired and learned a lot from many artists including the classics like Monet, Degas, da vinci (oil painters), and then some more contemporary artists like Steve Hanks, Jon Joy, and a local (Montreal) painter named Starkey (all watercolour painters). This painting was inspired by Andrew Wyeth, a watercolour painter, of note, he did a famous painting called Christina's World, where a woman in a pink dress was crawling across a hayfield, with farmhouses in the background. My painting was done from a photo taken along highway 50 (a road connecting Toronto to the suburb of Bolton where I grew up). I really liked the concept of the degrading status of farms and farm land, which are being replaced by suburbs and factories (as this barn eventually was). I'm not sure what the old carseat stands for, but if Christina (the crawling woman from Wyeths painting) were around maybe she would take a seat.... that just gave me an idea for a new painting.

Painting from photo is a very common activity for an artist, the advantage is that you have lots of time to make the painting, and you can avoid the embarrassment/discomfort of being on location.  The pitfall is that photos do not capture very well the shadows, often turning them to flat black (which is definitely NOT the case...shadows are filled with reflected light from the sky and surroundings). Also, the photo has so much detail in it, a lot of artists fall in the trap of trying to capture all of the detail... every wire, fence post, blade of grass....in this painting I used knowledge of location (outdoor) painting to keep it looking real... the shadows and grass are pale and filled with blue light, and the detail has been minimized in the less important places... study the hay field, and you see a bunch of controlled backwashes and brief lines to suggest grass, without painting every blade. Having said that, if you inspect Christina's World by Wyeth... he painted every blade, in watercolour that's tough. As they say, rules are made to be broken.

This is part of the Vanishing Landscapes series which captured disappearing farmland in the Caledon area. 

5x7" cold press. 199?*

*note: I have a bad habit of not dating my paintings, so can only estimate on the older collection, this was probably done between 1996 and 1999.