New Work: Blue Wish, oil on canvas, 36 x 36 inches

Ken Elliott Blue Wish oil on canvas, 36 x 36 inches  $5100 framed

This is truly an oil that painted itself. Last week I was out in a Colorado park with friends and I got a number of useful photos. This image is a pure fantasy, a tiny fragment from a larger photo of the sun setting over the ridge that day.

There isn't a single color or shape that is native to the photo and just as well. Once I began laying out the basic design, I kept to 2-3 blues and purples. Next, the faint, setting sun had to go in and that's when things really got interesting. 

Up to that point, this was a monochromatic winter scene but when the warmer tones of the sun appeared, it prompted the use of pinks, rust and grey-green. Everything began to fall into place from there. It was very tempting to continue to 'polish' it up a bit, but I was very happy with the rougher look and open brushwork.

New work: Sunset Chroma, Purple and Yellow, oil on panel, 24 x 24 inches

Sunset Chroma, Purple and Yellow  Oil on panel, 24 x 24 inches  $2450 framed

There are so many sunsets to see and paint. Lately, I've been thinking about applying a soft, pastel-like palette to a good cloud composition and I finally made one happen. So much of this oil came about it a non-lineal way and that's a bonus.

Rather than trying to represent a scene accurately, different color combinations were being tried out. During that discovery process, the moment the aquas and the pale greens combined above the clouds, the oil immediately became much more interesting. I didn't plan on it - I had some aqua setting out from a previous painting session and I gave it a go. A lot of white was added - I figured too much, but it worked out beautifully and led me to use the other pale colors that followed.  

The mauve cloud mass in the center anchors the piece and provides 'shade' and a way to transition to the darker foreground. The entire scene is nicely lit but not too much. After all of the back and forth and sorting through endless options, a soft sunset emerged. 

I'm enjoying this view!

Grateful Notices: Light in the Forest, oil on canvas 40 x 30 inches

Light in the Forest, oil on canvas 40 x 30 inches
Private collection
Exhibited:  Dominique Boisjoli Fine Art, Santa Fe, NM

My sincere thanks to the artist that purchased this work for her collection and  Dominique Boisjoli for putting it all together!

About this oil:

I went through a couple of permutations with this oil, including a discarded version. Starting on a new canvas the second time, the focus became the color red with an eye toward simplicity.

This composition is essentially 3 bands of color with a lot of moves to keep things interesting. About a third of the way into the creation of this oil, the yellows in the center began to take on a life of their own. It would be simple and perhaps even more dramatic to increase the amount of yellow in the background, but the painting seems to project something mysterious with the unnatural, yellow glow emerging from the forest. 

The leaf colors are saturated, unusual hues intentionally placed to add a random pattern and to further accelerate the effect of the reds.

The painting has a nice presence and it contains an interesting mystery unsolved.