The Culprit

This is the painting that started it all.  My Great Aunt Pat was talking with my mother years ago about how the last time she saw me was when I was in High School and we were talking about my painting class.  We were studying Fauvism at the time where color was the big thing.  I was painting something that I was putting "red grass" into and it was my favorite assignment ever, to be painting something all the "wrong" colors.  

So I suppose she asked me to paint her something like that at the time of that conversation, something with red grass in it.  She didn't care what it was as long as it had red grass in it.  I had forgotten all about it and Mom reminded me of course.  Got to work right away and sent it to her for Valentine's day I believe.

The photo I was referencing for this landscape is from My Grandfather's Camp out in Vermont.  I looked at that photo and decided that the things I liked most about the mountaintop camp in Vermont were the colors of the flowers in the fields with butterflies, and the sky at night.   

Painting with those things in mind is how this came about.  This is the first painting I did in my "own" style.