Expressionist California Plein Air Original Oil Painting

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A little village of homes against the woods along San Francisco Bay. This 24”x26” oil on artist built stretcher has … Read more A little village of homes against the woods along San Francisco Bay. This 24”x26” oil on artist built stretcher has a rich impasto texture that captures light. Winehaven, a closed down wine storage facility with worker’s homes.
I wanted to share this piece —it's an oil on canvas, painted en plein air up at Winehaven on the San Francisco Bay.
I used a heavier impasto throughout, particularly in the foreground houses and the dense hillside, deliberately allowing the brushwork to stay very visible and active. It’s almost a structural element itself, especially in the foliage where the strokes stand in for individual leaves and light reflections.
I chose a high-key, saturated palette to capture the intense, late-afternoon sun hitting those white and yellow facades, contrasted by the deep greens and purplish shadows. The slight distortion in the angles of the buildings and the energized movement in the trees were my way of injecting a sense of immediate, felt energy into the scene—like the view is vibrating a little in the heat and the wind.
Essentially, I was looking for that sweet spot where the subject is recognizable, but the painting's primary truth lies in the expressive quality of the paint itself. I think it captures the specific, rugged charm of that hillside settlement, filtered entirely through the immediate, sensory experience of painting outdoors." See less