Bellisimo Venice

It matters little whether or not you have ever been to Venice or seen the Atlantic Ocean or viewed the Dead Sea. What matters is that most of us are drawn to water. We love it as a spectator, sitting on the porch of a beach house watching the crashing waves. Some are desperate to be on it in a snug little boat. Others simply can’t get wet enough in the surf and swim. The point is that we are pulled towards water and hence, there is an abundance of water themed paintings. Painting the wet stuff has been the bane and highlights of many a painter. We all attempt it over and over trying to get it just right. And because water is reflective, it often offers up amazing distortions of real life. Even wet pavement reflecting brake lights on a dark evening can be a fantastic vision. The challenges for me in this painting were to make the reflections on the canal look real enough but also more interesting than they really were. I also attempted to put into practice atmospheric perspective which, if done correctly, makes the far buildings and canal go back into the distance. Living in Seattle, a city surrounded by lakes, bays, canals, Puget Sound, and the Pacific gives ample opportunity for painters who too want to take on the challenge of painting water.