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"Hay Bales, Late Evening" was based on a series of quick photos taken literally in the last seconds of sunlight in a field run by the university's airport near us, home to some of the few remaining pasture/open field habitats in the surrounding area (we even had reported nesting by Upland Sandpipers this last summer!).  I pass by the small opening that looks into the field and see the bales in all kinds of light situations.  This particular day, I had to hit the brakes hard and turn around in a church parking lot.  I pulled into the opening, jumped out and started snapping.  I got off 5 photos—all blurry and overexposed from the sun—before the source of the light went behind a tree or something and the effect was gone.  But the impression was burned into my brain and was the inspiration for this work.

My ongoing intrigue with the seeming magnetic attraction to the rural landscape is an enigma.  I would not be surprised to find it is some internal reaction to the burgeoning urban and suburban housing and retail boom that makes me yearn for the days of my childhood when there WAS some open ground nearby.  In fact the crowded subdivision we currently live in is named after the family who ran an old dairy on the same land, producing the best ice cream in this portion of the county.  As a kid, we used to ride our bikes "way out in the country" to relish their creamy concoctions.  The house I used to live in when I graduated high school was just a few miles from here, but is now buried under a parking lot of a Lowe's store, with hardly an empty field to be found.  Nostalgia?  Rose-colored glasses?  Don't know, but I guess I do long for those yesterdays when kids could wander around in nature, not shopping strips and traffic.  Silly me?

My photos had the typical overexposed sky appearing white due to the camera's inability to calibrate for the brightness.  I chose to override that fact and add some value and a bit of color, turning the upper portion of the painting into clouds with the sun peeking through right at  the horizon.  I pushed some color into the bales and the field to exaggerate the various complementary hues found in the scene.

Another of my “slight variations in value and color temperature” adventures.  A few years back I was able to go to a John Eldredge Wild At Heart event in Colorado.  I arrived a couple of days early, so I headed southwest to explore (photo sketch).  This came from my discoveries along one of those deep canyons of the West.  Not "The Grand" canyon, but a close competitor.  I was hypnotized by the slight changes in both color intensity and temperature as one cliff transitioned smoothly into another slightly lighter and color (bluer), then another and yet another.  I wanted to throw in the Raven and Red-tailed Hawk I saw soaring below me as I looked over the edge but I wondered if it would be distracting.  What would be your opinion?