Winter Blues

The past few weeks we have been inundated with low clouds and fog, creating the most beautiful blue sky at sunset. It was impossible to capture the color with my digital camera, but I was determined to try to emulate that unbelievable blue.

I pulled some images of the birch groves along the canals of France from my barge trip last September, threw them into Photoshop and went to work. The final images are a composite of multiple photographs, spliced and layered with varying levels of blur and opacity. All the layers are adjusted with major amounts of color alterations from the original. This work took weeks of manipulation to produce.

Satisfied with the results on my computer screen, I printed the images digitally onto 100 % cotton watercolor paper with archival inks. The images are spliced together and mounted to hollow core doors.

I am using more base layers of wax than in my previous work. These panels have up to 15-layers of clear wax medium, interspersed with a few layers of transparent white. Then finished with glazes of oil paint burned into the surface.

I just love the results. Mysterious, soft and gentle. I have one complete, one on the table, and hopefully two more will be ready for the show in April.

The result is so close to my memory of that winter color over the Puget Sound.