Island in the Clouds

Island in the Clouds, originally uploaded by Mark Nesmith.

There's a spot on Hwy 175 just past Seagoville where I often go to paint. It's just before the river where there's a group of trees on the hillside by a small creek. The area has recently been turned into a water reclamation project with rows of canals that give the effect of the salt marshes down near the coast. On this particular morning I arrived to see a brilliant display of clouds just over the tree line. Usually I focus more on the landscape itself, but this time I was entranced by the clouds. I painted a small, square version of this years ago in acrylic and donated it to an auction for deaf education. Here's a larger version (24" x 36") I just completed in oils. My original drawing and initial layer of color was pretty realistic, but as I went back to finish it today it turned into an excuse to play with my paint! The clouds at the top are fairly thick impasto and very loose in terms of brush strokes. Up close they disintigrate into painterly abstraction, but back away a few feet and they start to resolve into an image. I've been tentatively calling this painting "Island in the Clouds", but my daughter thinks it looks a bit like a cloud volcano. Maybe that would be a better name for it!