This piece was painted in the fall of 2026 just off the Blue Ridge Parkway in Blowing Rock North Carolina for the Blowing Rock Plein Air Festival and gallery show. It never made it into the show even though it should have, I just didn't have a good frame for it with me at the time, a hazard when you're doing back to back events and you forget to restock. This is the type of scene that truly inspires me because it does look "meh" when you drive past but, it's my job to elevate the mundane when I see potential and I love that challenge. What I saw here was the cool overcast light on the warm vegetation. Trying to capture both of those things at the same time can be quite difficult but, if I get it right the painting comes alive and I think I did that here. Also you may noticed in the photographs that I converted the paved road into a gravel road in order to emphasize the feeling of the scene. Fortunately I had a gravel road to look at to my left (not in the picture but it was there about 20 ft to my left down the hill) so I used my artistic license and combined the two scenes.
This piece was painted in the fall of 2026 just off the Blue Ridge Parkway in Blowing Rock North Carolina for the Blowing Rock Plein Air Festival and gallery show. It never made it into the show even though it should have, I just didn't have a good frame for it with me at the time, a hazard when you're doing back to back events and you forget to restock. This is the type of scene that truly inspires me because it does look "meh" when you drive past but, it's my job to elevate the mundane when I see potential and I love that challenge. What I saw here was the cool overcast light on the warm vegetation. Trying to capture both of those things at the same time can be quite difficult but, if I get it right the painting comes alive and I think I did that here. Also you may noticed in the photographs that I converted the paved road into a gravel road in order to emphasize the feeling of the scene. Fortunately I had a gravel road to look at to my left (not in the picture but it was there about 20 ft to my left down the hill) so I used my artistic license and combined the two scenes.