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, Kelli Folsom’s “Distant Farm House.”
This luscious painting has a quiet yet emotional quality to it. The value of the sky is not a very high key, but it pops because of the nice darks of the trees. Repeating the warm earth colors in the sky ties it to the landscape, giving the piece a cohesive feel. The textural quality of the clouds gives dimension to the sky. Notice how the clouds are warmer in the distance, a property of “white” in aerial perspective.
