Burden Lake at 6 a.m.

I couldn’t sleep because I didn’t want to miss the alarm. So I got up at 5, downed some tea and headed out to the bridge on Lake Burden.

No cars. No people. My easel gave me some hassle in the set up. Geese and their babies swam by and honked a lot. When I opened up my paint palette I discovered it had gotten turned upside down and it looked. Well. Disgusting. All my slow dry medium flooded over my colors and they were all runny and mixing together (I use goldenpaints open acrylics and LOVE them). But the upset made it so my paints had too much medium mixed in. Of the two pieces I did in the wee hours this one makes me think it was worth losing a night of sleep. It’s much more pastel than I’d normally do. So that’s a small victory. Painting calm water isn’t easy for me. And the residency was all about going out of my comfort zone. I wrote more about the experience here.

{painted en plein air}

• 12×12
• ready to hang
• acrylic on cradled birch panel
• 1.5″ deep sides painted warm gray. (example of the edge shown in the photos)