Brightly Lit Woods

Original oil painting on gallery-wrapped canvas with painted sides. Also offered as a giclee print on heavy, archival paper. From an original oil on canvas. Paper size has three-inch deckled borders on each side. Signed at bottom right and numbered at bottom left. Limited edition of 195 with 15 artist proofs.

Elliott loves doing these deep forest scenes and the possibilities are endless. A few months before, he had cropped another forest scene and seeing new possibilities with a yellow moving to red, he was eager to start the very next morning. These two canvases are the result.

Since the artist has a lot of works in progress he slowly worked up the 40 x 40 as a study. It took about a month to finish and then he began the 4 x 6 foot version. It wasn't a matter of simply stretching the image. Adjustments had to be made to allow the top foliage to open up more and with a bit more color variety. A lot of time was spent making the yellow glowing background on the left read differently from the background yellow trees on the right. The two yellows never connect and they have to read separately.

The reds set up the excitement and the complex verticals make it all believable. These are great puzzles to work out in the studio.