Tuesday, November 05, 2013

The Red Barn


All summer my guy and I trained to do a metric century bike ride. After trying out a couple of highway routes that proved to be absolutely awful for cyclists (no shoulder, shoulder that disappears, shoulder that exists on one side of the road but not the other, shoulder that is three inches wide and next to a curb... what kind of moron put a curb in on a secondary highway? Really now) we found one route that worked.

So as I've been riding on the overpass above this farm every week I've been staring at the barn thinking "OH GOD I'M GOING TO HAVE A HEART ATTACK hmmm... I should paint that thing. It looks nice. Would it be more of a quinacridone red or cadmium red middle? Shit here comes a pothole. Only 60 more kilometers to go!"

At the end of the summer I finally got out to paint the farm. It was very different painting it from the dirt road than looking at it from the highway overpass. Less spandex, for one. And many, many more thistles. After a pleasant afternoon of baking in the sun and sitting in a thistle patch, I tried out the huaraches at a food truck in a nearby town and then dragged this painting back to the studio, where I applied many changes to it. I think I'm finally having a breakthrough in painting.

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