Inspired at the Cottage

This past Thanksgiving I spent with a few close friends at the family cottage just north of Kingston. It was one of those perfect Autumn weekends where the sky is a perfect blue and all the Maple and Birch trees are in their full glory of oranges and yellows. I was going for a run on this glorious day and was inspired to capture the colours and shapes that were all around me. The great thing about running is that it gives me thinking time so that by the time I got back to the cottage, I had a number of paintings in mind that I had to create.

The first is Autumn Birch. Although abstracted, this is almost an exact copy of the actual landscape coming around the lake. Birches in particular are depicted a lot and I wanted to create sometime that says “Kate Taylor” and is consistent with my other work so I worked with very thick paint, going over the colours multiple times to get that layered look. I left the trees uncomplicated using white and buff. The sporatic yellow leaves add that burst of colour that is consistent with Birch trees in the Fall.

The second painting is from the cottage as well. There are areas that have been cleared as pastures and the brightly coloured trees and sky are in the distance. I wante d to play a bit with the perspective so added a dark line. This could be an abstract line or a tree trunk of a Sugar Maple. I worked with complementary colours of orange & blue as well as red & green to create a shimmer. I worked while they were still wet to get a strong contrast but avoided the colours going muddy.

I have the Fairlawn Art Show coming up this weekend so will see how people react to this series.