Landscapes, Desert — oil painting by Ray Patrick
Four small oil panels of the desert southwest laid out on a table — a red butte above a flat, a pair of mesas under heavy cloud, a canyon rim at dusk, and a violet range above a green shore.
Two rows of two. All four are built on the same armature — a level horizon in the middle third, a sky above, a band of ground below — so the set reads as four states of one problem.
Oxblood, rust and cadmium orange in the two butte panels against cerulean skies. The canyon rim is the cold one — indigo and lavender throughout — and the range panel adds emerald at its foot.
Thick and square, the rock laid as flat slabs with no drawing beneath and the cloud built from loaded strokes stacked rather than modelled. The board edges are painted white on all four.
Oil on canvas board, four panels. A studio photograph of a group of works rather than a single picture.
Lower edge of each, raypatrick, scratched into the paint.