New Work: Soft Evening Colors, oil on panel, 16 x 16 inches

$2150 framed
Dominique Boisjoli Fine Art,
Santa Fe, NM


About this oil:

This was a throughly enjoyable painting to make. It had a mind of its own and I didn’t know what was going to happen from one moment to the next.
 
It began with that grouping of blue trees in the back and two trees standing in the front. To complete the composition, strips of field and sky.
 
Then I was immediately stuck... it just wasn't coming together so  I retired it to back in the studio for um…. 2 years.
 
Back to the now, it was the end of my painting session yesterdaywhen I saw that neglected oil setting in a corner like a lonely pet. I picked it up and decided to do something unusual just to get  something going.
 
Two trees became four and to purposely keep things off-balance and interesting, I decided to paint in their shapes using soft blues and purples. The rest of the oil wasn’t developed at this point and those pale trees created a puzzle that was not going to be solved that day so I let it go again.
 
The following day, that little painting was calling out, insisting actually, for solutions. It is like having a conversation and immediately, ideas began to flow, but only one at a time.
 
First, it was the greens lightly laid in at the top on the blue line of trees. Then, to brighten and complicate the grasses in the foreground.
 
Oh, now light is coming in, so in response, greens and reds were added to the four trees. Then, to put in that glowing yellow-orange just above the dark tree line. In turn, that required brightening and adjusting the sky using three colors to create a glowing background. With that, the painting finally came together.
 
It all began with a small risk, creating bluish trees, an unintuitive choice that instigated a delightful and colorful conversation.




 

Newsletter, May 2020

BLUE WISH
Oil on canvas, 36 X 36 inches $5100 unframed
Sorelle Gallery, New Canaan, CT
More about this oil on Ken's blog, For the Color

May News:

I like what the great American painter, Robert Motherwell said, "Art is much less important than life, but what a poor life without it." Life continues but for too short a time, so let's endeavor to make it a beautiful and meaningful one.

My essentially living in the art studio has its advantages because nine new oils are in progress. There are no creative limits and it does keep things interesting here!

Thankfully, I will be delivering a 5 foot oil commission this week for a Florida hospital and other commissions are currently in the works. Thank you all for engaging me for your public and private spaces.

Keep in mind that galleries are just now reopening and have also stepped up their services for clients online and by phone. Feel free to browse either way and of course, you can contact me directly.

Due to virus concerns, I have cancelled the Denver Metro workshop for now. It may be that I will host another group workshop later this year but it depends on how safe it will be. I'll make announcements in this newsletter and on my website.

Meanwhile, artists are signing up for my private, in-person lessons and the online, 4-month Art Mentoring Sessions. There are a limited number of dates available each month, so please join in soon. Feel free to contact me and start a conversation about the possibilities.

Take your work to new heights. These workshops and private sessions will focus on strategies for making better paintings, colorist tools, going to new places in your work and making fine art. We will be going deeper into making better and more appealing artworks with a variety of strategies and in some sessions, Photoshop insights made easy. all workshop info


Here's a video about what happens in the Group and Private Workshops

My best wishes for your health, comfort and a life well-lived.
Ken

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New Works:


SACCADE XII
Oil on canvas, 48 x 60   $10950 framed
Saks Galleries, Denver, CO
More about this oil on Ken's blog, For the Color



BLUE WISH
Oil on canvas, 36 X 36 inches     $5100 unframed
Sorelle Gallery, New Canaan, CT
More about this oil on Ken's blog, For the Color



THE LIGHT IN THE WORLD II
Oil on canvas, 40  40   $6650 framed
More about this oil on Ken's blog, For the Color


Grateful Notices:


THE LIGHT IN THE WORLD I
Oil on Panel, 24 X 24   Private collection, CO
More about this oil on Ken's blog, For the Color


In the Galleries:


SUMMER PATTERNS
Oil on canvas, 40 X 60      $9500 framed
Saks Galleries, Denver
More about this on Ken's blog, For the Color



SUMMER SONG
Oil on canvas, 30 X 30 inches     $3700 unframed
Sorelle Gallery, New Canaan, CT
More about this oil on Ken's blog, For the Color



YELLOWS ON A STILL LAKE
Oil on canvas, 36 X 60      $8450 framed
In the studio
More about this oil on Ken's blog, For the Color



SUN BEHIND THE FOOTHILLS
Oil on canvas, 36 X 60      $7500 unframed
Sorelle Gallery, New Canaan, CT
More about this oil on Ken's blog, For the Color

Ken Elliott American Landscapes coffee table book:

This large coffee table book reprises 25 years of my works in oil, pastel, monotype, etching and collage. Large, coffee table hardback version, 11 x 13 inches, 94 color pages with essays. Book and a signed giclee print of the cover image: $150 or just order the book for $115.

Also available as an iBook / download on Apple devices for $9.99. You can preview the complete book and how to order your electronic or hardback versions from my website.

My Blog, For the Color

Want to follow along in my studio?
Come across some interesting art bits and intriguing posts from elsewhere? Check out my artist's blog: For the Color and on the right of the blog under Followers, click Join this Site. Right now you can view vintage videos of Renoir, Degas, a Piet Mondrian video montage, comments about my works and observations about museum artworks from some recent trips.

View my newest artworks:
This monthly newsletter is the best way to stay up to date with my new works and events. You can also follow me on Facebook and go more in depth with my blog, For the Color. To view the total of my works in all media and in all my galleries, go to www.kenelliott.comThank you,
Ken

Article: Fine Art Connoisseur Magazine, April 2020 / Thrill: An Artist's Perspective on Painting Landscapes

Thrill: An Artist’s Perspective on Painting Landscapes. An interview with Ken Elliott

Fine Art Connoisseur Magazine

By Fine Art Today
April 29, 2020

"Gold Progressions" Oil on canvas, 48 x 48 inches  Private collection, Michigan

On Landscape Paintings / An interview with Ken Elliott

Over 40 years ago I got a job working in a frame shop and for most of the years since then, I’ve been involved in the art business. More frame shops followed and later, working in and managing art galleries. I had an aptitude for it and enjoyed every aspect of the business: finding the artists and acquiring good works to sell. I came up seeing the arts from a business side and I’m very fortunate for the experience.

As an art dealer I was often asked the question, “What should I be painting?”

I remember the answer that popped in my mind and stayed with me ever since: Thrill yourself.

I’ve been working as an artist for over 25 years now and it’s easy to succumb to the confusion of what to do, market forces, etc. It’s a difficult path, learning how to make art and simultaneously run a small business.

What is it that businesses basically provide? This is an oversimplification but businesses either provide a service or sell something we have been persuaded to want. Art is not something we have to have, but for many of us we like the feeling of artwork in the home or public spaces. I would offer that we create a need in the viewer’s mind by making compelling artworks and ideas that go beyond the commercial clichés.

“Saccades I,” Oil on panel, 24 x 24 inches  Private collection, Denver

In my works I’m not trying to project emotions, tell stories, or represent a scene. Certainly I’ve done these things in the past and they are valuable tools to have, but it wasn’t fulfilling for me. Then I remembered my advice: “thrill yourself.” If the artist is thrilled then many viewers will feel the same.

Some time ago I had a brief conversation with the great landscape artist Forrest Moses. He asked me how my work was going. I replied, “I’m sick of the tyranny of making landscapes.” He wanted to know what I meant by that. I added that I was not happy making pictures of places.

“What do you want to do?” He asked. A phrase quickly came to mind and I told him, “I want to make art objects."


So now I am a painter who wants to make thrilling art objects. Think of those impressionist paintings in their decorative frames. Those works are more like art objects than pictures of things. Okay, that’s a simple goal but when I stepped up to that next blank canvas, it made me realize that the bar for making Art had just gone way up.

When I first started to draw, I put together four reasonably good pastels and showed them to a good friend, a respectable artist and art teacher. He gave me the usual positive comments and complimented me on how quickly I was learning. Then he asked me if I wanted a real art critique. I was certainly ready for that because I thought I was doing very well at the time as a newly minted artist.

He said, “Just because you can draw doesn’t mean you can make fine art.”

There’s truth. I got the tattoo and kept going. Looking back, I could have pushed myself harder but that’s okay, that’s the path I took. However, I often criticized myself for a lack of courage. I felt that if I were attempting braver ideas I would get further quicker. That may be so but I learned much later that it wasn’t courage I needed.

“Soft Blue Progression,” Pastel on sanded paper, 14 x 14 inches  Private collection, South Carolina

On Creating Landscape Paintings

Today I don’t have concerns about doing large-scale works and trying out new ideas. Sometimes I appear pretty daring but that’s not what’s going on. I simply have more experience in solving problems. I’m not shy about getting into difficult positions anymore because I have more solutions.

I’m struggling less now but I find that I’m pushing myself harder than ever before to make those fine art objects.

Although I love all types of subject matter it is the landscape that pulls me the most. I’m not working outdoors so photography plays a role. Typically there is something in the landscape that interests me so I’ll get a shot of it and bring it into the studio. I don’t bother trying to represent the scene but rather explore the composition and other elements that intrigued me.

That initial painting is often the beginning of many more on that theme. My real passion is color, so that initial scene becomes a means to try out more color experiments later. I’m reasonably separated from the photograph so another universe opens up with unlimited potential, and so it goes as I continue through more paintings with those motifs of sky, trees, and land.

“Gathering Light II,” Oil on canvas, 48 x 48 inches  Private collection

In the oil “Gathering Light II” (above), I took a scene that I see every day, all greens and browns, and I pushed it hard. The strategy was to create a powerful, high-color scene. The stronger colors are not diluted, but magnified because they were not repeated elsewhere. It all comes together in a bright, luminous landscape where all of the elements accentuate the others, setting up the glowing red-orange background as a focal point.

The pastel “Wood at the Lake” (below) was a workshop demonstration on painting landscapes. I wanted to get the basics of this scene down and free myself to try out some color combinations. I got into trouble right away with it (how nice to have an audience when you’re scrambling), but it worked out to be a good lesson for all of us. With time running out, solutions had to come quickly. This pastel needed a lot of clarity so I added the aqua and surprisingly, that was a move that helped on a lot of levels. I had been too focused on the colors elsewhere. Once I added the darks and the complexity of those branches the rest was simple and I finished it out with a series of small chromatic moves. The composition was solid enough that the colors hardly mattered at that point—there were so many color options.

“Wood at the Lake,” Pastel on sanded paper, 15 x 14 inches  Private collection, North Carolina

I do far more oil landscape paintings than pastels these days but the pastel Soft Blue Progression is worth mentioning because it was also done under time constraints. My gallery requested something for a small show and since I had a studio full of larger projects on canvas, I had put this off. Now I was down to the day of the deadline, so I quickly sketched in a pattern of treetops, connecting them to a gently arching bit of land. As I began to fill it in, my concern was how to make it compelling. What I had on the paper was a “soft” start so I continued with that poetic vein. I held everything back and focused on making that background glow. That became the prime idea and from there everything else fell into place. I followed that pastel up with new a color combination in the oil painting “Gold Progression.” I’m very happy the gallery pushed me into doing that small pastel.

Earlier I alluded to creative destruction, and offered two examples of this: “Winter’s Morning” and “View to the Foothills, High Contrasts” (both landscape paintings shown below). These oils are the result of my painting over earlier, completed oils that had been in the studio for too long and it showed. I passed by those oils every day and at some point critical mass was reached and they went up on the easel. I had nothing to lose so I went on a fast attack and began to cover up the original oil creatively, letting some of the older work show through.

“Winter’s Morning,” Oil on canvas, 36 x 48 inches Private collection, Texas

“View to the Foothills, High Contrasts,” Oil on canvas, 40 x 40 inches Private collection, Colorado

Things were happening quickly and I didn’t stop for a break. I was determined to make a really good start with new color combinations and I would figure out the rest later. To my surprise, each canvas was finished in less than two hours and required just a few minor tweaks the next day.

A Series of Landscape Paintings

OK, there is a trend unspooling here and it doesn’t require endless studio sessions. I decided to pull out a French word I had been saving: saccades. I wanted a new motif where I could endlessly abstract the forest, keep it fresh and produce thoughtful works (art objects) that would thrill me. A French title would be just the right touch, oui?

With this Saccades series, much is abstracted and the forest motif becomes a place of patterns, color, and light effects. These works take on a life of their own quickly and they make a lot of demands: more shadow, color, light, mass, brights, blacks, in an endless dialog until they are finally in balance with all of their complexity. The Saccades works are designed without a singular focal point. This leads the eye to explore the equally engaging parts of the artwork without coming to rest in an obvious place.

About the word saccades: Since the late 19th century, researchers have been aware of the phenomenon of saccades, the rapid movement of the eye as we shift our attention from one thing to another. As a result, vision itself is discontinuous. We construct a “map of reality” from saccades much as a film editor puts together a scene from individual camera takes. (From an article by the film maker Errol Morris, New York Times, April 10, 2008)

I’ve had some nice successes with the two and five foot Saccades and the freedom they brought me. They made me want to try more of the tree forms I like doing but I wanted to keep that fresh look, something the plein air painters do so well. The result was the oil painting “Trees in Half Shade.”

“Trees in Half Shade,” Oil on canvas, 36 x 36 inches Private collection, Castle Rock, CO

That painting was another demo from a workshop. The entire idea was to make a good start and that was the case here. When I came back to the canvas about a month later, I could clearly see a number of good options going forward and happily, I wasn’t bogged down, trying to undo too many problems. That good start gave me the clarity to proceed. I decided to keep it loose and more color was added very directly with open strokes. There wasn’t enough contrast and the painting looked a bit weak so I grabbed a dark blue-green, adding it to the foliage and where the shapes made contact to the ground. The painting came alive with the new darks and now it required some stronger colors to keep up. Adding the brighter color was pure fun and I was a bit disappointed when the oil declared itself finished.

In the studio there are always a number of landscape paintings in progress — that way I never have to worry about being inspired to work. Plenty of puzzles are presenting themselves and I simply work on what seems solvable at the time. It’s all about making compelling, fine art objects by any means possible.

So back to the commerce side, I asked a businessman what was the secret to his obvious success. He said, “If you do something really well, making money is a side effect.”

Let’s go thrill 'em!

About Ken Elliott

Ken is a colorist with landscape paintings as the focus of that interest. His works are not portraits of places but scenes that are subjected to abstraction – still recognizable but infused with colors and values beyond the normal. For over 25 years he has explored his landscape themes, subjecting them to dramatic extremes of light and color combinations that are richly stimulating and at times poetic. His works are direct, showing the lessons of the Impressionist as well as Modern schools. For the past 25 years, he has worked primarily in oils and pastels.

“I am continually drawn to the landscape and its infinite variations. The compositions are a starting point for unexpected things to happen. By pushing what is possible in the scene, new potentials are presented and I’m intrigued to follow. The works never follow a straight or efficient path because I am looking for what is not known and to bring it into form. I am trying to thrill myself and offer something new and precious to the viewer.”

View more landscape paintings by the artist: www.kenelliott.com

New Work: Saccade XII, oil on canvas, 48 x 60 inches

Saccade XII, oil on canvas, 48 x 60 inches $10950 framed
Saks Galleries, Denver, CO

It's good to have a number of paintings going in the studio to work with. In this 12th Saccade, a very textural painting developed because I worked over another oil from 4-5 years ago. The heavy impasto that resulted took me back to those Monet works. It was a joy to create a forest with all of that ready-made texture.

The purpose of the Saccades is to create a painting without a singular point of interest. Doing so presents a number of problems, first being that all the areas on the canvas are equally interesting. This is a good practice for most paintings anyway, so this oil puts that idea to task.

There is the additional game in play here and that is depth. The viewer gets the impression of being in the darker part of the forest looking out. The light is there, but nothing much is revealed. 

There is a considerable forest pattern effect across the 4 x 5 foot space. It has an abundance of complexity and just enough depth to be an intriguing presence on the wall.

About the Saccades Series shown here:
"Since the late 19th century, researchers have been aware of the phenomenon of saccades, the rapid movement of the eye as we shift our attention from one thing to another. As a result, vision itself is discontinuous. We construct a “map of reality” from saccades much as a film editor puts together a scene from individual camera takes." From an article by the film maker Errol Morris, NY Times

Video: Ken reviews and comments on some of his works at the Sorelle Gallery, New Canaan, CT

In the studio with works in progress

Ken reviews and comments on some of his works at the Sorelle Gallery, New Canaan, CT

click to view

It's always an interesting exercise to look back on a body of work and take the time to remember the many paths that brought those works to completion. In the studio, there are times when everything falls away and the artist is left with the paints and artistic problems to solve.

Looking at this video, I'm happy to see that all the puzzles were resolved at last and that the paintings are now out in the world to enjoy. After this little break, there are more canvases to make.

Grateful Notices: Soft Forest Blues, oil on canvas, 40 x 40 inches

Soft Forest Blues, oil on canvas, 40 x 40 inches
Exhibited: Sorelle Gallery, New Canaan, CT

My thanks to the collector for purchasing my work and to Sorelle Gallery for gracefully making it all possible.

A bit about this oil:

The goal here was to do a forest with blues woven into the composition. I wanted something subtle without the blues being primary. It's easy to use blues to make trees but it's difficult to make them believable.

All of the colors are greyed down, even the darks and lights, allowing the different blues to gently glow in the background. The numerous trunks and branches create a lot of complexity, all to create a veil for the blue hues. The line of trees is bordered with that bit of sky and the muted orange below, a bit of reality to bring it all together.

Finally, the foreground was muted even more, allowing the other subtleties in the painting a chance to be noticed.

Grateful notices: At the Pond's Edge, oil on canvas, 48 x 60 inches

At the Pond's Edge, oil on canvas, 48 x 60 inches
Exhibited by: Sorelle Gallery, New Canaan, CT
Video: Ken discusses the making of this oil 

This is a painting that was in progress during three seasons, Fall, Winter and then Spring. Each season was represented here at one time and eventually painted over with the following season. The process was enjoyable and a lot of color work was done but this large oil took up a long studio residence in what seemed like the season of perpetual indecision.

Once Spring appeared in the studio window, green solutions presented themselves. Yes? No? The greens were tried and failed but they did work nicely in the lower portion of the blue trees. Spring with blue trees? In this case yes, and when the blues blended into the greens mentioned earlier, the painting began to come to life.

Add the aqua in the background for more drama and for good measure, the yellow tips catching light at the top of the painting.

In the end, what seemed to make this oil work were the contrasts between the darker trees and the light yellow/greens at the top and bottom. Care was taken to soften the sky and foreground, further increasing the effect of mass in the center trees.

Throughout it all, the oil was telling me what to do and I followed along, not being concerned about the time it was taking.

Grateful Notices: Turning Autumn, oil on canvas, 48 x 48 inches

Turning Autumn
Oil on canvas, 48 x 48 inches, private collection
Exhibited:   Gallery 89, Steamboat Springs, CO

My sincere thanks to the collector that purchased this oil.

This painting works on numerous levels: the light running in from the right, delicate foliage helping to create depth, the verticals of the tree tops, and the deep blues happily contrasting with the yellow foreground.

That's a lot happening in this canvas, but the 4 foot square format provides plenty of creative room and there is plenty to see. The eye travels from the bright foreground all the way up and back to those atmospheric aquas at the very top. It's a very satisfying slice of the forest.

New Work: Forest Placido, oil on canvas, 48 x 36 inches

Forest Placido
oil on canvas, 48 x 36 inches
Saks Galleries, Denver, CO   $6750 framed
 

As this painting progressed, more atmosphere seemed to circulate in this forest scene. I really didn't notice right away because I was more focused on working out a variety of aquas and blues. The color changes not only added more interest - more to see, but it also created the effect of diffused light coming in from the side and the top.

This is a complicated work and it's interesting that all the while, I was striving for more simplicity! 

For this oil, I began with a lot more detail and then began subtracting between the tree trunks by adding those background colors. 

The entire color palette is a bit subdued with very few spots of full-strength color. There is so much of the 'back and forth' to create this - brush to paint, paint to canvas and repeat, look, brush to paint again. It's a very calming routine despite having a lot of problems to solve along the way. 

As it often happens, this painting went through a lot of changes. In fact, it's painted over the top of a previous oil with a Lot of Problems. It felt really good to cover it up.

In the last painting session, the oil was not quite right so I used purple-blues to paint over most of the existing bright green grass at the bottom. It changed the feel of the entire oil, creating a calming, unifying effect, leading to the Italian title, Placido. In classical music, it is an instruction to play the passage in a peaceful, calming way.

I miss working on it already, but it's back to the studio tomorrow where more experiences await.

Grateful Notices: At the Pond's Edge, Emerging Spring, oil on canvas, 48 x 60 inches

At the Pond's Edge, Emerging Spring
Oil on canvas, 48 x 60 Private collection
Exhibited: Sorelle Gallery, New Canaan, CT

I'm drawn to the intersections of sky, land and water and particularly how the trees come into contact with each of those elements. An amazing amount of hours that went into the making of this one. There is a great deal of texture as a result of successive ideas, starts and stops appearing as subsequent layers upon layers. This oil first had an incarnation as an autumn scene but I became enamored with the blues and slowly brought them to prominence, shifting the painting into spring.

This painting is evidence of considerable sessions in the studio with innumerable color experiments and before you know it, a fall painting became spring.

When viewing it close up, it is a painting with literally thousands of lace-like marks with each color uniquely contributing to the whole. Everything is done with restraint and a light touch.  The end result is a line of trees with substantial mass.

Except for the base of the trees, all of the foliage and sky edges are delicate and barely there with the early spring light diffused everywhere.

My thanks to the collector that took this home.

Grateful Notices: Blue and Green Progressions, pastel on sanded paper, 22 5/8 X 30 3/4 inches

Blue and Green Progressions
 Pastel on sanded paper, 22 5/8 X 30 3/4 inches    Sold, private collection

Forests are extremely complex settings for making artworks. For this pastel, I opted to use a sparse group of trees in the foreground and back it with a virtual wall of color. It's a setting I often use and the possibilities in this wood are infinite.

The list of creative possibilities is large and there are options within each one: light, color, composition, contrast and more. It was a pleasure to explore them all, layering one idea over another, moving forward, backing up, and watching it all come together, bit by bit. These were not the colors I had originally intended, but the forest had it's own ideas.

My time in this wood was a pleasurable one.

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.

Grateful Notices: Soft Autumn Light, oil on canvas, 48 x 48 inches

Soft Autumn Light
Oil on canvas, 48 x 48 inches
Exhibited: Saks Galleries, Denver Private collection, Denver

This oil began as a smaller, 24 x 24 inch study, Bright Conversation, below.

Bright Conversation
Oil on panel, 24 x 24
Exhibited: Sorelle Gallery, New Canaan, CT
More about this oil on Ken's blog, For the Color

This composition really appealed to me and after finishing the smaller oil, I began the 4 foot square version.  The light was shifted to the right side and the palette focused on greens and blues. The foliage is more open in this version and there is more undulation in the foreground.

The effect on the larger canvas is a more open landscape with increased depth and motion. I am very happy with both of these versions and grateful that they are both in private collections. Thank you!