Big Sky

this is an 18 x 24 oil painting I did in 1995, and titled it "Big Sky". It's from a reference photo of a trip my dad and I took to the Dakotas several years before. It is one of my personal artist's collection. I have always loved sky paintings that have wonderful depth and it was about this time I realized that skies have as much depth as the landscape. They really have much more, of course, but we usually don't see it. Usually, they are an afterthought in landscape paintings. (Paint all the stuff and then you have to put in a sky.) Some landscape paintings don't even have skies. It resonated with me once more reading Georgia O'Keefe's words at the museum in Santa Fe, that she painted the bones against the sky, because there is more of it than anything else here. My drive on the way back from New Mexico was long, and through an impending storm. The growing storm clouds were irresistable, and the landscape was so small in comparison. I still want to finish my cow paintings, but the sky is calling me.