– Jeanne Mackenzie reporting –
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, Christine Lashley’s “Snowy Woods, Last Light.”
Lead Image: “Snowy Woods, Last Light,” by Christine Lashley, oil on panel, 8 x 6 in. Collection the artist
Lost and found edges are a good way to help lead the viewer’s eye around a painting. This forest of trees could have easily become a mass of vertical sticks, bringing redundancy to the piece. By emphasizing the foreground trees, and softening the background trees, the eye naturally builds the forest behind the dominant tree. Keeping the edges soft at the top keeps the viewer’s eye in the painting and not exiting at the top. The varied bases of the trees act as a lead-in to draw you into the painting. The subtle warms and cools beautifully impart that soft sense of sunlight so prevalent with the low sun in winter.
