Mountain blue bells in the Iris bed

[DLGardner]

Here is today's plein air. This is incredibly addicting. I hope I do at least one a day!! I posted this in the critique forum but there were so many threads started after mine that I don't think anyone saw it. So I'll post it again here.

[LarrySeiler]

Here is a case where nature proves its abstract qualities and potentials. Interesting.

Not knowing your limitations of sunlight out there...I and others might have encouraged more contrast which would infer presence of sun. With that in mind, I think you will become known as the painter of subtleties.

This I predict will mean many works that will have a softer sense to them. I think that is cool, and it is a pause for me to get a broader sense of our country; the different conditions that exist that would await us. I'm sure a number of people have picked up what they would expect coming to Wisconsin and upper Michigan from my work.

In a sense...that validates a certain "importance" to the work that is carried out, doesn't it?

Your visual balance is a conundrum. The weight and going's on are severely right of center which leads toward tension, yet the subject bombards the senses with all that which ought and by all rights is soothing. It seems to carry the potential of a unique balance though, in that all the pointed leaves act like fingers and diagonally point the eye toward the open space of the upper left; and those broad thick brushstrokes redirect the eye back down. For all that my aesthetic senses want to say it balances....it yet seems to have a great deal of tension that wants to pull me down and out of the bottom. Whether or not that is a problem, it will be interesting to see what others have to say.

Greens are for many artists very difficult to handle and pull off. I usually say that green is best painted by not putting too much green in there. Suggesting the greens. Taking advantage of the inbuilt juvenile sense that many have of local color, ie the -"grass is green, sky is blue, snow is white" kinda thing. You've managed to put blues, violets, and variations in there. So all in all, I'd say a pretty good work.
Larry