Landscapes, Desert — oil painting by Ray Patrick
Desert under a broken sky, with a flat-topped mesa at the right, a long violet range across the middle and banded ground running to the foreground.
Three registers — cloud, range, desert floor — with the mesa the only form breaking the horizontal at the right. The ground is built from parallel bands that widen as they come forward.
Cobalt breaking through grey-violet cloud, over a range of deep blue. The floor runs rust, plum, ochre and olive in alternating strips, the warmest part of the picture.
Thick strokes dragged horizontally, each band a single pass with the knife or a loaded brush, so the edges stay hard. The cloud is scraped rather than brushed and stands off the surface.
Oil on canvas board. Strong impasto; photographed on a spiral sketchbook of line drawings, which is beneath the work rather than part of it.
Lower right, raypatrick, in cobalt over the ground, letters touching.