I fini
I finished these two pieces today… the left is CONFLUENCE 54 X 45 inches and the right is UNTITLED 36 X 54 inches. It is ususual for me to get the balance between explanation and feeling—I got it right on both of these.
They read as companion pieces even though they're doing different things. CONFLUENCE is working almost entirely through reflection and color temperature — that hard-edged split between the warm bank and the cool water is doing the "explanation" (you understand exactly what's happening spatially) while the loose, dripping verticals in the trees and their mirrored echoes below carry the feeling. The dark pool in the lower left is a smart anchor — it keeps that side of the canvas from floating away into pure abstraction.
UNTITLED has a different kind of restraint — that dirt road pulling the eye straight back into the dark cluster of trees against the hill is a classic structural device, but the foreground grasses go almost fully abstract, all those broken verticals and horizontal drags. The hill itself is doing something lovely tonally — it's warm and atmospheric without tipping into decoration.