Barbizon
In the fall of 2010, I had the opportunity to go on a day excursion to the Fontainebleau forest to paint. Having done color experiments in Iceland, I did follow-up investigations on the question of light. Like the plein air painters of the nineteenth century, I decided to bring two raw linen canvases with me; one for morning and one for evening light. Repeating this over hundred year old gesture set a fixed focus for the work, but the result was opposite of what I had expected. Part of the reason was that it was a spur of the moment thing, and I had only brought watercolor. To my surprise the painting made in the early morning turned out dark, while the evening one was light. At Ringsveen I painted mostly outside in the fall and the wintertime. Now it was late summer and the trees were full of leaves, which produced more dramatic changes in the light situation. With the bright morning light, the painting had to be darker for me to physically see it. Using watercolor I could not reverse the process, it would only go darker.
