I painted this scenic waterfall with my oil painting workshop students en plein at Smalls Falls in late Summer. The Sandy River was swollen with powerful water as it forcefully plunged down this most colorful gorge. It was lightly raining off and on all day, but it didn't deter us from painting the marvelous grays of the Located in Franklin County, Maine, this colorful gorge hosts a 3-foot waterfall that cascades into a 20-foot wide circular pool. It is followed by a 14-foot fanning horsetail with a deep, oblong pool. Further up you will find a 25-foot segmented waterfall, with a plunge on the left, all equally crystal clear water. The bottom pool with a 20 foot plunge is what I depicted in this painting. All four of these falls are located just south of the town of Rangeley and offer the most colorful and beautiful gorge rock in the region. There are plenty of spectacular places to paint from direct observation. These colorful gorges with forceful waterfalls display exciting beiges, orange, greens, blacks, rich browns, golds, and ivory colors. Definitely one of my favorite and most challenging waterfalls to paint in all New England.
I paint in an impasto style using a loaded brush and palette knife mixing Venetian Black Oil Wax medium to my oil paint to increase its viscosity and improve the color to a brighter velvety glow. This painting medium also increases the transparency of the oil paint, giving it a semi-transparent sheen. The paint, is smooth and thick as peanut butter, and is painted on a gypsum gessoed wood cradled panel. This painting is high quality all the way down to the hand made Williamsburg and Old Holland oil paint I used to paint it.
I am intrigued with the timelessness in change in my paintings. I want them to show a love of color and light with emphasis on the expressive painterly marks and forms, which evokes for me a recognizable feeling, a nostalgic memory, or even emotional qualities such as the smell of balsam in the morning forest air. In this composition I demonstrated how to establish the moving falls as the center of interest in an oil painting as it cascades through the colorful rock canyon.
Happy Thanksgiving Everyone!
