Often I paint more or less what it in front of me, but this most recent painting is nothing like the photo! (Well, a little like it.) It’s a portrait of my home town, Worcester, VT. The view is one all Worcesterites know, from partway up the hill opposite the one on which I live. Here’s a photo from this fall:

This was my starting point, then I set about making changes. The autumn colors would be a distraction for this piece, so I changed it to summer. I stylized the mountains, added more layers of them, and made them purple, well, because I can! And because I liked it! Same thing with the yellow and orange in the sky: Yellow is purple’s opposite, and the two together just sing. Further, the sky and mountain colors, because they are not real, communicate the magical quality that I wanted. I  created a greater sweep of field, because I wanted the additional contrast between the visual smoothness of the field and the texture of the forest. I eliminated many of the buildings, choosing just a few to represent the whole. I liked that most of the buildings are white, but I made a couple more of the roofs red, so that the red of the barn-like structure on the left had a little visual company. Here is the result:

“Worcester Village,” 9″ x 12″