Painting

Blue Hour Over the Ridge

Deep oceanic blue dominates the lower two-thirds of this piece, building toward a luminous violet-silver sky that hovers above a dark ridgeline. The composition reads like a landscape remembered rather than observed — a mountain range caught in that fleeting moment between dusk and dark, when the last light turns everything to mercury. Two impasto eruptions break the blue field: one at the left center where dark teal and gold push through like something surfacing, and another in the lower right where white and pale blue churn together like whitewater or wind-driven snow. The upper zone is where the interference paints do their quiet work. That silver-violet expanse shifts dramatically — catching lavender and periwinkle from straight on, cooling to a near-metallic silver from the sides, and warming toward a subtle blue glow at oblique angles. The close-up shots reveal the canvas weave pressing through the thin interference layers, creating a textile quality that contrasts sharply with the thick impasto below. This painting changes its sky every time you walk past it. The lower field was built with urgency — heavy cerulean blue worked wet with broad gestural strokes, palette knife pulls, and deliberate sculptural deposits of paint that rise well off the canvas surface. The ridge line itself is a raw edge where dark ultramarine and phthalo meet the interference layer, with a thin white crackle of impasto defining the boundary like a frost line. You can read the speed of the hand in every stroke down there. Painted back in 2009 at my spot in Eastlake, Seattle, WA.