“Hillside With Trees” painting

“Hillside With Trees”, 2008, acrylic on canvas, 12×9″

While stuck in a traffic jam in Pacheco Pass, California, I snapped a bunch of photos out the car window at the surrounding countryside. It’s hilly terrain: archetypal California hills fuzzed with dry golden grasses and dotted with craggy oaks and other tough scruffy trees.

Some paintings come together like magic, while others seem to take forever. I never know which will be which. This seemingly simple composition took months to complete. The beginning went fine, but then I got stuck halfway through. I just couldn’t decide what colors to use for the final layers of dots. I’d put a lot of effort into putting down some pretty weird colors, and just wasn’t sure where to go after that. So it sat in my studio for a couple of months, half-completed and untouched, while I puzzled over what to do with it. I ended up finishing it off with fairly straightforward colors, but much head-scratching had to happen before that. Sometimes a painting just has to sit around a while before it’s finished.

This painting is sold, but others may be seen on my web site: www.barbarajcarter.com