A while ago I visited this small island in the middle of the Indian Ocean called Ile de la Réunion off the coast of Madagascar located near Mauritious island. After a long and winding narrow road that snaked through the old volcanic mountains, you come upon a hidden valley only known to local farmers and informed residents of the island. The specialties of the region include breathtaking scenery, flavored rum, and a certain kind of smoke-able green leaf with spiky leaves that grows well in the tropical climate. Needless to say all of these things made for quite the experience which hopefully gets conveyed in the painting. The actual scene was a little less exciting than I wanted, so in the painting I used artistic license to amp up the colour scheme and play with the cloud cover a bit to make it look like a storm was brewing. The point of these adjustments was to infuse the painting with what I was feeling, not necessarily what I was seeing. Artists sometimes forget this aspect of landscape painting especially when painting from a source photograph rather than on location. I chose to emphasize the purple-yellow complements, and created scale using a small house in the foreground.
8 x 10" cold press, 2011
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