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I continue to look through plein air paintings that were started and sometimes nearly finished on location but that I put aside knowing that they needed some further thought and finishing touches.

This painting of the George Washington Bridge in the background was my last outdoor painting this past fall. An artist friend had told me about the park in Hastings, NY where this was painted and I had gone there with my camera in hand a week or two before to see if it had any promise as a painting site. I thought it did because looking south you had the view of the George Washinton Bridge and looking north, the Tappan Zee Bridge.

On the day that I got back there to paint with two other artist friends, it was sunny but blustery and quite cold. After a couple of hours my hands were getting numb so I knew that I had to stop. Adding finishing touches in the studio in the middle of winter to a painting started on location is a real treat for me. This won't be the last painting I do from that location.

Sometimes a painting that I finished a couple of years ago is still in my possession. At the time I completed it, I felt that I had gone as far as I could go with it. Still, any time I came across it, I had a nagging feeling that it didn't feel quite right.





I came across one of these paintings the other day on a day that I was putting finishing touches on a number of my summer paintings and looking through others that I had left in an early stage of blocking in. I was chugging along feeling very happy as I worked and in a very positive mood where I felt that I could tackle a painting or two that I had not known what to do with earlier.





The painting that I'm calling Hudson from Manitou Mountain caught my eye and I suddenly had some thoughts about what small changes I might make to improve the overall composition. I added a little height to the tree on the right and some darker values to the shadow side. I also added to the height of one of the mountain slopes so that they were not so similar in height.





When I make changes like these, I'm no longer looking at the scene or a photo of it. Instead, I'm asking myself, "What does this painting need?" It's sort of a dialogue with the painting itself.





Am I through with this painting? I think so but as long as it's in my possession, you never know. Some new notion about what the painting needs may hit me. This doesn't happen with every painting I do, thank goodness. Some get finished and stay finished and I feel satisfied that they work. Some I discard after a time and decide that I no longer like them.





Let me know if you think this painting is finished and how you feel about it. I may never get back to that location again to give it a new try. A friend, who was a hiker and knew the Hudson Highland region very well, took me to this site. He has since moved and I don't think that I could find the trail again. Oh well, on to new locations and adventures in yet to be found sites.

Since the very cold spell we've been experiencing in New York the last few weeks, I've been looking back at paintings I started on location this summer and even finding a couple of paintings I never finished from a couple of years ago. Suddenly, I saw their potential and decided to get back to work on them and to see whether I could complete them. In the case of the painting I've pictured here, which I'm calling Rail to Lamy, I had abandoned it after I brought it home and didn't think I would ever go back to it.

One thing I've learned in recent years and that's that I shouldn't throw out unfinished paintings because I never know when I will see something in them that a while back I couldn't detect.

Maybe in the case of this painting, it was that I could feel and remember the heat of that day and could enjoy trying to enhance and finish that scene and bask in the memory of that day. As it is, I've been hibernating inside and trying to stay out of the cold as much as possible. Finishing up summer paintings seems just the thing to do at this time of year.

This past Saturday, I drove up to Beacon, NY for a mid-winter reunion of a wonderful group that I belong to called the Lower Hudson Valley Plein Air Painters, a division of New York Plein Air Painters. I had been waiting for a good snow storm to come along for the impetus to drive up to the Hudson Highlands region where Beacon is situated, since I like to hike around and take reference shots with my digital camera for possible use in a painting of a winter scene.
I had forgotten that there's a quality to the sunsets over a region that has numerous mountains and a body of water that is quite spectacular no matter what time of the year it is or how barren the land is. On my way up to Beacon just as the sun was setting, I couldn't keep from exclaiming out loud about how gorgeous the sky was over the dark mountains looming ahead along Rt. I-84.
Now I'll have to get back up there again soon with my camera in tow.
I'm including a new painting of a scene started on location last fall in Cold Springs, another town in the Hudson Highlands just South of Beacon.