Marsh at Sunset- Contemporary Impressionism

Marsh at Sunset, 30x20, acrylic

Look for this painting in my ad in the September issue of American Art Collector Magazine! Several people have asked me how I get that warm, rosey glow in my sunset paintings, and I'm happy to share my method. For quite a while now I've begun my paintings with a loose under-painting done entirely with transparent red oxide. This is painted on linen which has a lovely texture for landscape work, and because this pigment is transparent it allows the white of the primed linen to show through the color, just as in watercolors. I'm working here with Chroma Interactive Arylics. I mix some of their Fast Medium into the paint so the underpainitng is dry in a matter of minutes allowing me to begin overpainting in color immediately. The trick is to decide where you want the underpainting to show through for a light effect and then resist the urge to cover every inch of the canvas with new colors. The texture of the linen also helps to diffuse the edges of the paint stroke and you can get a dry brush effect over the under-painting which also allows a lot of the warm color of the transparent red oxide to show through. Using the transparent red oxide underpainting in combination with a reddish purple in the water and sky is also particularly effective for getting a sunset, (or sunrise for that matter), glow.

She sweeps with many-colored brooms,

And leaves the shreds behind;

Oh, housewife in the evening west,

Come back, and dust the pond!

You dropped a purple ravelling in,

You dropped an amber thread;

And now you've littered all the East With duds of emerald!

And still she plies her spotted brooms,

And still the aprons fly,

Till brooms fade softly into stars

And then I come away.

Emily Dickinson

Here's an art related analysis of this charming Dickinson poem found I found at Yahoo! Answers:

Dickenson is referring to "painting the landscape" with all the colors of the sunset as she "sweeps with many colored brooms". The brooms don't represent anything in particular other than a broad paint brush to paint the landscape with all the colors of nature - she refers to emeralds, amber, pearl and so on, and these are the colors found in a sunset.
1 year ago
Source(s):
She Sweeps with Many Colored Brooms", Emily Dickenson, quoted in http://www.about.com/poetry