Matins

I'm not sure if my latest painting is at a crossroads as far as what I'll be painting in the days ahead...

It's not exactly a desert landscape, and there's a human in the view! Still -- I like the results, but I'd have to do some serious thinking about how to include humans in the vast "wastelands" of the desert landscape.

In addition, conceiving of this image, and executing it, took longer than usual. I may have to increase the price to compensate!

Anyway, this is Baldwin Lake at the Los Angeles County Arboretum, Arcadia, CA. If you were a fan of "Fantasy Island," you've seen this lake as the "lagoon" that "Da plane! Da plane" supposedly landed in -- although, as you can see, it's much too small to land a plane here. (The Queen Anne House, the white-with-red-gingerbread trim structure Mr. Rourke used as his headquarters, is off to the right out of the field of view).

The painting is a combination of reality and fantasy. The Arboretum isn't open when the sun rises, so I've never seen the place with the backlighting I've depicted. Peacocks do roam the grounds, but they tend to remain near the entrance -- a good brisk walk off to the left. And I've never seen a young lady in a gauzy white dress standing there like this.

In addition, the lake's appearance goes back to 1997. Most of the papyrus plants (the green "pom-poms") seem to have died off. Also the curved palm tree on the right actually curves away from the lake, not toward it, and it's tall enough so the fronds should not even appear in the painting.

In any case, this is an idea I've had in my head for many, many years -- something tropical with exotic birds and an attractive young female (well, I assume she's attractive!) with my favorite color harmony -- yellow-green-blue. And the aquatic papyrus looks so tropical (African, in fact -- they grow along the Nile River from Egypt to Uganda and Tanzania).

I'll probably put the painting up for sale eventually. First, I'd like to see how prints of the image do.