Dressed For Success And Carriage Driving In Acadia

 

"Dressed For Success"  Casein on paper    9 x 12"  ©2014 www.kathipeters.com

 

  I would have to admit that every painting, sketch, or even an idea that I create comes from my daily life, my love of our place in time and our life with horses. The entire month of July, driving with our horses up at Acadia National Park, has provided me with so many ideas for new paintings to be done, that I will be drawing on that wealth of inspiration for a long time to come. I have draft horses paintings that I have already painted in my sleep, but need to get done on canvas….driving scenes to paint, and Maine landscape paintings that I know I need to do. I know what I am going to doing this winter!

 

The Carriage Roads of Acadia

 

“Dressed For Success”, one the latest paintings I have done, is an image that was inspired by a photo I took years ago at a sleigh rally at the wonderful Washburn-Nor lands Living History Center in Livermore Falls, Maine. I had done a watercolor of these Percheron draft pair years ago, and that painting was sold. I wanted to revisit this handsome pair again, and this time I decided to use my casein paintings with a warm background, then that warm ground appears through the cool white paint brush strokes, creating warmth to the skin of the handsome draft horses. I am very pleased with the effect I get with this approach. You can see this approach a lot in my work.

 

 We are finally back home at the farm now…our horses enjoying a respite from daily carriage driving on the wonderful carriage roads at Acadia.  August is a busy time up there and we will wait a bit before we head up there again. Now we are busy catching up on farm work……painting the house, civilizing the perennial gardens and harvesting the bounty that our meager vegetable gardens are providing us with.
 
And I will get back to the studio and paint!!!