“The Last Horizon”

Here’s another piece in my recent series, where I’m exploring thinner layers of color over an underpainting of sepia tones. It’s giving my work a looser, more gestural look as well as building up layers of light.

As with “Odyssey”, I began this piece with burnt sienna mixed with a glaze, then wiped out the highlights to begin feeling the composition. Subsequent layers deepen the dark tones and add highlights to the light areas.

This is from a trip to the Oregon coast earlier this month. It was one of those amazingly beautiful days, and a rare one in the Pacific Northwest where the beach was warm, sunny, and there was no wind.

The title comes from our constant push to the west as North Americans; we were always looking to the west and striving for the hope that it represented. The horizon is a place of desire and hope; no matter what is going on in our lives, there’s something different right over that horizon, if we can only get there. We long for it, we strive for it, but can never achieve it. The horizon remains a distant wish. It’s the joy and myth of travel, the idea of adventure and, most of all, arcadia.

Wishing you beautiful autumn days filled with light.

Dawn