Thornburg Barn

This is a 9x12 acrylic on canvas board. The painting was done in plein air at the old Thornburg place on Lassiter Mill Rd. near Farmer, NC. I started painting at around 6:45 pm trying to capture the golden fleeting sunlight across the top of the barn and trees. This was a real struggle for me in a race against time to catch the mood of the scene before the sun hid itself behind the trees.


At the end of the evening I had a painting that I had no attachments to and was very close to painting over it. A fellow artist, Scott Boyle took a look at it and offered some critique from a fresh perspective. I took the advice and spent a little more time adjusting and I'm glad I did. I kinda like it now.

I guess my lesson I learned is: paint fast, paint accurate...but don't sweat it. You can work the details later if you need to. And, it's always rewarding to get a fresh perspective from an outside source. It's so easy to get wrapped up in the parts of the painting that we struggle with and totally ignore the accomplishments.