Featured Painting of the Week: Citrus Morning

Citrus Morning
Acrylic paint & newspaper on canvas
24” X 36“ 2010.02.14

My favorite time of the day is the early morning. I’m an early riser, waking up about 5:30AM every morning. I’m up and out of bed testing the weather while fetching the morning papers (my raw material) from the driveway. Then I feed our two cats, make the first pot of tea of the day and settle into my studio.

I’m in my studio when the sun peeps over the mountains to the East lighting up the garden and my studio. I love the Palm Springs sunrise, crisp, clear, clean; always a surprise. I watch the sun creep across the garden illuminating the plants one by one. Every morning, the light is different; colors changing with the light.

We had, for Palm Springs, a wet winter. One morning as I watched the sun light up the garden, I noticed the lemon tree glowing yellow, green and blue. Blue! Where did that blue come from? I grabbed my camera to capture it. I sat watching that tree until the sun’s brightness bleached it back to “normality”

I uploaded my photos into my computer anticipating the images and colors captured that morning. The camera gave back my lemon tree with no luminescent yellows & greens. No blue. Just my puny lemon tree looking as it normally does. Drat.
If that damned camera can’t do it right, perhaps I could. With those colors in my head, I began painting. I did a much better job of it than @Nikon! I used iridescent white and silver in my palette to add luminescence to approximate the shifting quality of light. I layered yellows & blues to pull greens from the two. I tried a bit of red but the resultant orange wasn’t right so I layered more iridescent yellow and white to pull it back.

My paintings are multiple layers of paint. The initial layers glow through to the surface of the finish piece. I eventually pulled the colors together to approximate the colors I saw glowing in the lemon tree.

When I photographed the finished canvas, I discovered this painting was as difficult to photograph as my lemon tree on that magical morning. The greens were elusive; the blues predominate. The painting’s colors shift in the light. The blue and green struggle for dominance, much as it did on that early morning in February.

This is how Citrus Morning came to be. If you are interested in purchasing or knowing more about this painting, please respond to this blog, E-mail me at JerryL@JerryLHanosn.com or contact me at my studio: 760-992-3157. You can see more of my artwork for sale at www.JerryLHanson.com

Thank you!
Jerryl