Sunsets, Seascapes — oil painting by Ray Patrick
An upright oil of the sun setting behind a bank of cloud over still water, with a dark shoreline across the middle and the light laid down the water as a broken path.
Upright and symmetrical about the reflection, which runs straight down the centre from the sun to the bottom edge. The shoreline is one hard black horizontal; everything above and below it is light on cloud or light on water.
Sage, pewter and dove through the cloud with gold and cadmium orange at the sun. The water repeats those colours and darkens to indigo and near-black at the bottom edge.
Built from hundreds of short horizontal strokes of close-valued colour, each left as its own mark, so the reflection is a weave rather than a smear. The sun is one loaded stamp of unmixed gold.
Oil on canvas paper with an unpainted margin. Photographed on the studio table.
Lower centre, raypatrick, scratched into the wet paint in blue.