Everyone has a 'camp' in Upstate NY it seems. Camp is often a confusing term often meaning a tent, sometimes a trailer, often a very crude cabin but most likely a very comfortable place to wile away the hours. Most often used in winter for a place to base a hunting group camps are as much a part of the landscape in the NE as 'beach houses' are in the southern part of the US.

This road leads to the 'camp' in Belmont, NY and is bordered along its length with birches, oaks and sugar maples and you can see a panoply of beautiful wildflowers during three months of the year. My recent painting of the aster was taken along the road.

My painting is an attempt to give you the feel that you're traveling through a cathedral of nature. You'll notice that I painted the limbs above the road to give the viewer that feel.

I think I overworked this painting and it should have been simpler in execution. Painting a forest is a complicated and confusing thing to do, limbs, vines and shrubs all converge and confuse the painter. I suffered from some of this and after I was done I stood back and looked at the limb structures and realized they didn't make logical sense. A limb follows a very logical sequence on the tree and in some cases mine didn't.

I do like the feel of the painting and look forward to trying another forest painting in the future.
I think as painters we're looking for more complex paintings to try and I find I'm not quite up to speed yet to attempt some of these but I give them a shot anyway!