Evening Lights: Painting

As I walked home from an errand this evening, this is what it looked like.

I didn’t paint this today or tonight but on a similar in April 2006; the warm temperatures make it feel as if it’s a month later than it is. But in that year for some reason the perfect turquoise twilight of spring and the clear fresh air was suddenly inspiring to me to paint the tiny lights reflected on Chartiers Creek, the wash of streetlights on the fronts of buildings and deep shadows behind and between, and that big sky above it all.

I also decided to paint all this in paints, not pastels or watercolors or anything else I was accustomed to using. I had been studying painting techniques and wanted that tactile, dimensional quality of paint, the wet that dried, applying daubs of pure color in one place and then letting two or more colors mix on my brush in another place.

Beginning with three 8″ x 10″ stretched canvases, brushes and paints I’d gotten for nothing from a friend whose painter aunt had passed away, I thought this was the best way to capture the deep colors of the night scenes.