Minnetonka's Majestic Maples

"Minnetonka's Majestic Maples" 72"w x 36"h

From early childhood memories and on up to high school days there is a stretch of road I enjoyed traveling on. The road went up and down hills and around tight curves like an old road would do. With new roads, they just flatten everything and you just can't beat an old road for a Sunday drive. I remember the road being named Shoreline drive, and there was also a road numbered 101 that had a nice bridge. Anyways, these roads would get really close to the water, almost like you're getting as close to the lake as you're driving without plunging into the water. The builders of these roads must have had a real love of lake Minnetonka, and endeavored to make traveling around the lake as pleasurable as possible. With the fond memories of these roads and lake in mind, I created a triptych painting from memory titled Minnetonka's Majestic Maples. Working from memory is often challenging as I have several images in mind and I try to get the images as close to the memory as possible. I remembered vividly looking through the trees as I traveled around the lake, the season was late Autumn, and the leaves of the trees were almost done with their fall color and had begun to turn shades of brown. This piece uses brown, or burnt sienna as the paint is called, as an underpainting that really gives the piece a sense of time, almost as if it was painted long ago. I think it's the golds of the leaves and browns underneath playing off eachother that gives that feeling of time. And the memories may be thirty years old, but I can remember them like they were yesterday, almost like I was riding around the lake as a child, staring out the window at the lake through the maples ...

Please contact Your Art's Desire Gallery in Minnetonka, MN for more information on this piece.