Lake House
2012, 36 x 60 inches, acrylic and gloss medium on canvas

Holton Rower has a whole set of paintings that look like they’re completely out of focus. It’s a really cool effect and those paintings were the inspiration for this; I wanted to see if I could come close to replicating that seamless, blur effect. I wanted to keep it very simple and use only a few colors (white, primary blue, phthalo blue, lemon yellow, and medium yellow) and then blend them smoothly.

This is the scene from the back porch of a lake house owned by my aunt and uncle (of course, it’s not really the actual scene, more of the feeling you get standing out there in the late afternoon). I was attempting to highlight the water and sky. Initially, I was going to add an in-your-face, bright, jarring cube in the middle (as the lake house), but never got around to it and now think it would ruin this piece. It ended up being nice, basic, non-threatening, and kind of peaceful the way it is.

It took a lot of attempts to get a decent picture because the autofocus on my camera phone couldn’t get the right focus. So, maybe that means I reached my desired effect.