Dune Path, Plum Island ~SOLD Somebody liked this!
Painted from reference shots I took on our Newburyport, Massachusetts trip last summer. We spend half a day on the beach down at the extreme southern point of Plum Island in the National Wildlife Refuge area. The dunes rise high in some spots and the abundant salt-tolerant grasses line the area between the preserve and the shoreline. It's so beautiful there. In painting this piece, it was an interesting observation, when mixing colors, that the difference between hot sunshine and cool shade is often a lot more dramatic than we often think they are. The dark violets of the shady side of the path up the dune are quite dark in comparison with the warm, bright sunlit sand right next to it, with very few gradual midtones. Before laying down my first strokes, however, I warmed up the whole canvas with a thick coat of bright magenta pink, which you can see peeking through the areas where the heat of the sand and grasses meet the August sky.
