To be honest, this one was painted then sold before we got to have it in our own house, so I don’t remember much about it. I do recall that the painting grew from a desire to revisit the sky colors I had used in an earlier painting in acrylics titled “Twilight Path”, which I still have hanging in my studio and look at every day.

The stone ruin amid the trees was suggested by an experience I had when I came across a stone fireplace and chimney in the middle of woods in Massachusetts. To stand in those woods and realize that a house used to be there gave me a weird feeling, like visiting Momson VT ;-)

It was painted in oils on a panel, probably a Gessobord ™ panel. I laid in the stonework first just so I knew where the sky wrapped around the edges, so to speak.

After defining the general shape of the stone ruin, I followed my usual practice of painting from background to foreground, creating shadows by glazing dark tones over the underlayer of sky colors.

I remember that it felt important to me to get the right feeling in the moon and sky at the horizon. Once that had been safely rendered the rest was fairly routine painting.

Whenever I felt the need to insure a realistic feeling to my tree shapes I’d take a walk outside and look at the trees in our neighborhood.

Michael Whelan