"N. Dennis Rd. -- Morning" -- field study 8x10" on canvas -- oil -- Margie Guyot

This was one of those mornings where I wanted to get going, without wasting time to shower & primp. Like a stray dog, scavenging for tidbits from garbage cans, I scavanged for wearable dirty clothes from my dirty clothes basket. Washed my face and took a "French whore's bath", spraying deoderant, as my neighbor calls it. Threw my paints into the Explorer and I was off!

This was painted on a little one-lane gravel road near Ellsworth, Michigan. It's North Dennis Road, off Essex Road. For months I'd drive past this road and always looked down it as I passed, admiring the shadows cast over the road. This morning I decided to go paint it.

It may be September 22 here, but few of the trees have changed color yet. They say the bright yellows and reds are at their height the first 2 weeks of October. What I liked about this scene was the thin ray of sunlight that fell across the road.

The sky was a kind of strange cream color, with high clouds a good portion of the day. It wasn't really blue. Maybe a rainstorm is coming this way soon.

The colors I used for this painting are the colors Scott Christensen uses. I just returned from a workshop with him out in the Jackson Hole, Wyoming, area. He uses the 3 primary colors (red, yellow & blue plus white) and an additional 7 grayed tones. I was skeptical of his palette at first, but grew to really like it. Having those extra gray-tones helps speed up the painting. This painting practically painted itself.