Landscape of Virginia

The very active intersection of Rt 6 w Rt 20 was the subject of my interest today. I set up around noon and worked with a few breaks from the sun for four hours. I felt as if I had gott'n off to a bad start but as I worked on this canvas I saw where it developed rather nicely into an unorthodox painting composi tion but I felt it worked. It worked well and so I left it alone and kept developing it into the canvas you see. I began with the buildings setting too far down past the midpoint of the latitude. I simply kept going but I almost just rubbed it all out to begin again. As I was taught and are many art students, to not begin unless one is totally confident of a good start to there canvas. One cannot build well unless one has a good foundation upon with to set his or her building, and this canvas was questionable at best when I got started. What I did was simply try something questionable and see what I could do with it. I actually felt some sense of being upset ...

There are places both on the map and sort of forgotten about and off the map of frequent travelers. The town of Esmont is one such place, it's just off a main east/west highway in Central Virginia. It had it's hayday from what I've learned mostly during the time of the roaring Twenty's and such...I think most of these place benefited mostly from the mining going on in the nearby town of Schulyer. Now the mining is limited and the town of Esmont has but a few families living in it's homes. The most noteworthy building I found to be the old bank building which was nice deep red from the brick used in it's construction. It's the only brick building in the town that I could find, but it's a nice three story building with some nice features to it with the name "Esmont Bank" still built into it's brickwork above the main doorway. With the sun out and mild temps I headed over to the quite town. I set up and painted for about th...