Sign of the Times

(C) 2015 Dale DiMauro

This spring Vermont experienced a prolonged dry period before it finally rained early this week.  I went kayaking with a friend a few weeks ago. To reach the water we drove down a dirt road between cornfields, and the dust our vehicles kicked up was unbelievable. I have spent my life mainly in the Northeast and the Northwest, two areas with plenty of rain and humidity.  This dirt road in the dry spell made me think of the Dust Bowl.  

The painting above looks like the Midwest due to the isolation of the house, the flat landscape, and the dry dirt road running along its side. In fact, the house stands in a village in central Vermont. I have exaggerated the Midwestern qualities in this picture because this spring has felt so different, somewhat foreign. People have said this looks like an Edward Hopper painting, perhaps because his work often creates that sense of alienation and isolation, which was common in modernism.

I intentionally isolated this building from the neighboring houses to heighten its starkness. I usually paint very blue skies but attempted a varied sky with streaks of rose and Winsor blue, which show on the painting but not so much in the photograph. The house clearly is unoccupied and the "for sale" sign emphasizes its precarious future. 

However, to me, there are a lot of positive aspects to this picture. First, it is spring, which brings promise. I like how the distant lawn rolls off the horizon and makes you wonder what lies beyond. I also like the upper window where you can see through the glass and back out into the sky. The unusual rock in the foreground was likely found from the nearby river and brought to the site to mark the property boundary, perhaps over a century ago.

For this watercolor I used Arches 300lb watercolor paper which is a thicker and heavier weighted paper than my usual 140lb. This thicker paper can take repeated washes with scraping and lifting of pigment but dries more slowly.