watercolor painting by Ray Patrick
Two small watercolour studies of prickly pear laid side by side on a sketchbook page, with empty wooden frames stacked behind them.
The two sheets sit at different heights and neither is square to the frame. The left study has a sky and a horizon; the right has neither and reads as a field of cactus with no air in it at all.
Emerald and sap green through both, with cobalt in the left sky and violet in the shadows of each. Small flecks of orange mark the fruit; the ground is ochre and bone.
Transparent and quick, each pad a single loaded touch left exactly as it landed, with the shadows dropped in beside them while the paint was still wet so the two bleed together.
Watercolour on paper, two studies. A studio photograph of a pair of works rather than a single picture.
No signature legible at this scale.