As a landscape painter, it’s easy to go out on location and find yourself attracted to the obvious – those components of the landscape that just jump out at you screaming for attention (the bright gold of September aspens, the 14,000 peak that dominates the horizon, the picturesque alpine lake…). Sometimes it’s hard to ignore the majestic and notice the more quiet corners of the landscape, but oftentimes the more obscure subjects can result in the most beautiful, contemplative paintings. As I grow in my art, I’m trying to make an effort to seek out the scenes that are less obvious and find beauty in that which is commonplace.

The day that I did the study for this painting, I found myself driving all over the southwest suburbs of Denver trying to find something suitable to paint. It was not one of Denver’s best days for air quality, and the mountains of the Front Range were almost completely veiled by the haze of pollution. The leaves on the aspens were long gone, and the only color left was the orange of the last cottonwood leaves. In short, it was kind of an ugly day, and there wasn’t an “obvious” landscape painting to be found.

After driving around for far too long, I decided to park my car down by some ponds at Chatfield State Park and just paint what I saw as practice. I set up in a field not far from my car, and did four paintings in a row from the same location, changing only the position of my easel. I started with the most obvious view of a colorful cottonwood tree with the mountains rising up behind it, and finished with a sketch of the sun setting over the foothills. The study for this painting was the third I did that day, and it was a subject I would have completely overlooked had I only done one painting and moved on.

When I returned home from my painting trip and reviewed my studies, this scene was the most quiet of the bunch, but I felt it was the one with the most potential for a larger painting. I was drawn to the variation in the foliage around the pond from full-grown cottonwoods with no leaves on the far bank, to the saplings in the foreground in full color. Mostly, I liked the way that the still water provided a place for the eye to rest in the center of the painting, with the movement of the landscape encircling it. 

If I hadn’t taken the time to explore all of the possibilities of this particular location on what happened to be an unremarkable day, I would have completely missed this painting. It was a good exercise in searching for beauty – one that I’ll be doing more often in the future!