New Painting: Asheville

Asheville, 2008, oil on panel, 12 x 16 inches

My first landscape since 2001 is this scene from Asheville, the charming southern town in North Carolina. I visited Asheville two years ago, and I can still remember how impressive the open land was. This painting was executed from a photograph I took from the back porch of the Biltmore Mansion. The site of this estate was unreal, so much open land and vegetation could do nothing but leave me breathless. Well, from being impressed and from all the walking I had to do! I have been meaning to paint three landscapes from this visit but I'm always locking myself into painting onions. I had to get out of my comfort zone and I dove into this piece. It was a lot of fun working on this oil on panel painting. Creating the different shades of blue for the Blue Ridge Mountains was hard, but it was worth the effort.