PAINTING THE LIGHT: Late Afternoon, Baxter Boulevard

Thursday, April 10, 2008

Late Afternoon, Baxter Boulevard

9 x 12, acrylic on paper
SOLD

Not a serious painting. I did this for fun tonight after work. Another experiment. I liked the way the red underpainting came out in the Tobey Street painting, so I decided to use it again with this one. I took this photo while waiting for a red light one afternoon back in November, when the skies were wild and just starting to clear after a storm. I've been wanting to paint it ever since. I took artistic license with the colors; the day was dramatic, but the colors ran more to gunmetal gray and deep purples than the reds and lively purples you see here. I livened it up a great deal. I particularly like the way the sky turned out, and the city of Portland on the other side of the water. I'd like someday to paint a panoramic view of the Portland skyline from Baxter Boulevard.

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Original Paintings and Custom House Portraits for Sale

I paint colorful New England landscapes and cityscapes in acrylic. You can purchase my original paintings, small prints, and digital photography through my Etsy shops, CityscapesByBreton, ViridianArt, and Heartshots. You can also purchase prints of many of my paintings, in various sizes, at Fine Art America. The link below will take you directly to my shopping cart.

If you're in Maine, and want to check out my work up close and personal, you can find a number of my paintings in their summer home, at the Rock and Art Shop on Route 1A in Ellsworth.

Laurie Breton is a contemporary realism painter who has lived her entire life in Maine and who feels a close connection to the New England landscape. Her paintings of Maine country roads, New England cityscapes, and old houses reflect those deep roots.

Painting came to her late in life. As a child, she loved to draw. But it wasn't until her late thirties that she picked up a paintbrush, began creating art on canvas, and fell in love with painting.

She calls what she does "painting the light" because her paintings reflect her passion for light and shadow and their effects on the landscape. As a self-taught artist, Breton paints what she feels in her heart. Every scene she commits to canvas was chosen because it has struck some deep emotional chord in her, and she tries to infuse her work with that same strong emotion. It is her belief that if she is able to invoke that emotion in just one other person, she’s done her job well.

Over time, certain themes have emerged in her work. As we seek meaning in our busy lives, we tend to overlook the ordinary, the everyday, the familiar places and things that shape who and what we are. Even as we continually seek that elusive "something else," the overlooked ordinary—the innate sense of home—is the reality in which we live our lives. That reality is what Breton tries to paint. She hopes that people will see her art and feel that connection, that "I've been there" feeling, that belief that what she’s captured on canvas is a reality that's deeply and intimately familiar to them. She wants her work to take the viewer to that home-place each of us holds inside.

Her paintings are held in private collections in both the U.S. and abroad.

PAINTING THE LIGHT

Thursday, April 10, 2008

Late Afternoon, Baxter Boulevard

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