In this series, plein air painter and instructor Jeanne Mackenzie takes a look at new paintings by contemporary artists and points out why they succeed as painted images. This week, Don Bishop‘s “Soft Green.”
This piece has a beautiful, simple design. The sky, trees, and field are all distinct sizes, colors and shapes, yet they all seem to relate to each other. Many artists are afraid to leave “nothing” in the foreground. Even though the shape elements in this painting appear solid, there is a lot of textural playfulness going on. The trees have the field color in them, the field has the sky, and the sky has a subtle bit of all. It looks like a fun mixture of brush and palette knife to liven up the shapes.
