This oil Autumn Tree in Laren (2013) is an early impressionist painting I made after a trip to that place. Every time I visit the Singer Museum in Laren, Noord-Holland, Netherlands I walk by this tree. This artwork is made after a photo I took whilst going to a lecture at the Museum. No materials at hand and I was in a hurry. However, there is not a single chance I leave unmissed when it presents itself. In fact, that is what an artist has to do: register and strike while the iron is hot. So there it was, a beautiful treescape in red, orange, green, purple and brownish colors.
The actual process of painting needed a rather meticulous approach, I remember. Basically it was about putting tiny blobs of paint on the linen, painstakingly avoiding creating a hugh rubble pile. That didn’t come easy though. Perhaps that is the reason I admire those impressionist painters like Pissarro. It was worth the effort though and a break-away from my female forms I made during that year. In 2019 I made a quick sketch of two horses in the meadows before this tree. Those horses were featured a year earlier as well in a tragic setting.
Perhaps it is all about that time of year. Fall offers a full array of beautiful colors, maybe even more than during Spring and Summer. In Spring many colors can look the same. Leaves all show shallow lime greens. Therefor foliage can look pretty much amorphous. Instead, this very scenery showed great contour contrast with the treeline in the back. It is not always that I paint impressionistically but this tree definitively was worth doing it. Makes me wonder why I didn’t do more in the first place.
Oil on linen (60 x 80 x 0.9 cm)
Artist: Corné Akkers
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