Palm

Palm and Live Oaks, Florida. Watercolor on Arches cold press, 10" x 14".

During the past few days I've been working on this watercolor painting, a further exploration of the palms I sketched while in Florida. I spent some time looking at John Singer Sargent's wonderful paintings of that same place, and gleaned a lot from studying his paintings of palmettos and reading the technical notes on his work in the catalog from the recent show in Brooklyn/Boston. Still, we have to forge our own way, and in any subsequent paintings I'd let go even more.

In this painting I'm happy about the way the light comes through the  leaves, and especially with the suggestion of Spanish moss hanging from the branches: that's just wiping through wet paint with the side of my hand.