Velvet Night

In an earlier blog about my painting called, "Whispers in the Moonlight", I mentioned that nocturnal paintings have always fascinated me, so I added another book to my growing collection of books on artists called ,"The Color of Night". It's about Frederic Remington and contains 75 of his most well known nocturnal paintings of the American west. After many years of experimentation and constant study Remington became a master technician of the American wild west genre but especially paintings of the night. In the books foreword Earl Powell III of the National Gallery of Art explains why night paintings draw such interest, "...nocturnes thus reflect both the external beauty of night and the internal threat of darkness".

This is a 10 x 12 pastel painting executed on dark blue Colourfix paper. Kathi Peters, my good friend and fellow artist provided the photo of her Welsh Cob mare, Victoria, with her first colt, Legacy. The background scenery and barn don't exist in the photo....I made them up.
"Cut down and out...do your hardest work outside the picture and let your audience take away something to think about..to imagine." Frederic Remington 1903.

Whispers in the Moonlight

This is one of my favorite paintings, even though
the mood and scene may not appeal to many. I know..it's a little strange, but I love a good mystery and nocturnal paintings are such a challenge. The colors and subtle tone variations of night light require extensive study. Frederic Remington did some real beauties as did N.C. and Andrew Wyeth.
Gargoyle's are said to ward off evil spirits and this handsome fellow sits in my back garden doing just that, day after day, in all seasons. Sometimes he's covered in a deep blanket of snow or pelted with a driving rain, but he is stoic and vigilant. I named him "Nick" because of a notch on the bridge of his nose...a battle scar, no doubt the result of a skirmish while defending his territory. The cold blue moonlight and long shadows running across the snow reinforce the haunting rendezvous between these two . The cat, fluffed out against the chill, seems bewitched by him...I wonder what happened....Nick will never tell..