Clouds Over Texas, new painting

Clouds Over Texas, 9X12, oil on linen board
Texas Art Gallery, 800.783.4278


Hi Everyone,
I finished this painting recently. When I was in Texas last May, I was struck by the incredible cloud formations. When I moved to Minnesota from Ohio, I thought Minnesota had wonderful skies, and they do. But then I experienced Arizona Skies and thought they were the best. But nowhere have I seen such beautiful skies, day after day, as I did in Texas that weekend. Unfortunately I was in town for only a short time and I wasn't able to do any on location painting. So I took lots of photos. Back in the studio, six months later, and working from several photos, I came up with this scene along one of their many rivers. I decided to make it a late day scene and make the bottom half of the trees in shadow. Setting the painting at this time of the day allows me to play up the saturated colors that make these skies as interesting as they were. In the original photo of the river that I used, there were some uninteresting rock formations on the left hand side, which I replaced with the shrubs on the foreground shore.

Thanks for looking, Steve