California Oak Trail – Impressionist Landscape Oil Painting

Morning on the Trail – Hall Canyon Oaks
Oil on hardboard panel
11 x 14 inches

This is a painting that I began last year, put aside and then worked on again recently with a fresh outlook. I think that all painters have paintings like these. Either we were too busy at the time working on other paintings, or somehow lost interest along the way, or otherwise decided that the time was not right to bring it to finish.

It’s been hanging where I see it whenever I pass by. Enough repetitive glances and I start thinking … what if I tried this, or that? What if I corrected this challenging passage? What if I tried a different color here or there? Or added some different shaped branches?

The fact is, until the time that a painting is signed sold and on its way to a new home, any one may be a “work in progress” and as our experience and vision changes, so does the way we express ourselves. And just as the natural world changes and morphs with time and the seasons, so do we.