Rain on The Barrens

6" x 6"
Oil on Linen Canvas
unframed
2024

Today, January 17th, dawned too cold and windy for plain air painting of the new snow, so I leaned back into late October for inspiration.
The wood pellet stove keeps the studio warm enough, and the hours pass magically.

In Maine, the leaves of the low bush blueberry plants turn bright red in Autumn for a few weeks. These fields are cultivated as commercial harvest, but the plants are wild and grow not only in the grower's fields, but in patches on all the glacial mountains.

I am assuming we call the cultivated fields "barrens", as they are so wide open and windswept, beautiful yet desolate.

A small blueberry barrens painting - from the memory of that cloudy October afternoon driving to the the Franklin fields in their last week of color, the mountains behind shrouded in rain.