Oil on canvas, 36x36in
Available: The Breckenridge Gallery, CO
$5600 Framed
 
 
The farms and ranches of the western USA can be magical in the morning light, which is why you can often find me up before dawn, out on the roads and looking to capture the warm light of sunrise with camera and paint.
 
I ran across such a scene one July morning in rural Colorado. The sun cast a beautiful glow around a field of ranch horses. The trouble was backlighting. Creating a painting characterized by backlight (looking directly into the sun) can cause all sorts of challenges to the artist, including washed out color and too-dark shadows. But this is my favorite type of lighting to paint so I needed to make it work. The key is to throw a ton of color and detail into the shadow areas, as I did with the bulk of this horse, while leaving the rim lighting (the highlight) bright and indistinct. This isn't anything I invented...I learned it from Rembrandt's axiom, "Light conceals, shadow reveals."
 
The other thing I spent a lot of time considering was the background. While the actual background of the ranch was colorful and strongly lit in the lower 1/3 of the scene, I felt this wouldn't do justice to the subject. I decided to darken the background and make it quite abstract, leaving some highlights in the grasses at the horse's knees. This brings the viewer's attention to the horse instead of lingering on the background.
 
Sold framed in a gallery-quality gold floater frame.