For years I have tried
to see and paint things differently, shifting away from realism toward abstraction. Often the painting fights back, and I find
myself adding picky details to what should have been the finished product.
I realized that’s what
had happened here when I compared previous versions I had painted of roughly
the same view.
This much-photographed
scene was named ‘The Million Dollar View’ about a hundred years ago by the
marketing department of the Canadian Pacific Railway, as it was the view from
the (then CPR-owned) Banff Springs Hotel.
Sometimes pictures of the Million Dollar View included the hotel itself,
as in the painting below ─ one of the (slightly) more abstract ones I referred
to above.
from the ’50 Shades of Orange’ chapter in Paint Every Mountain
Some time soon I am going to try painting pairs of greeting cards, one representational and one more abstract, at the
same time. Using the same colours. Maybe.
