As I revisited, reviewed, reworked and renewed this painting, which started out its life as “In a Blaze of Glory” in 2005, I tried to keep aware of the things I liked about it: the dramatic sky, the grasses, the purple barn, and the things that I felt distracted from the overall composition: the silo, the tree, the “out of the tube” viridian green.

In revisiting the painting, I felt it lacked focus. I needed to follow my mantra: Simplify, simplify, simplify. So, with only a brief hesitation, I jumped in and painted out the silo and the tree. Immediately, the painting was better. Those two elements were detracting from the barn, and eliminating them opened up the space in front of the barn, letting it breathe.

The sky seemed wishy-washy – and worse yet, competed with the barn for attention. I needed the sky to support the barn, not overshadow it. After more revisiting and reviewing, I suddenly saw a drawing problem with the barn. Wrong angles/proportions on the roof, which I redrew and corrected. It is funny how you can look at something for years and the “suddenly” see something. The veil lifts and reveals. Once the drawing was right, then I noticed that the doors and windows on the barn were too symmetrical. That is actually how the barn was “in reality” but hey, I’m an artist and I don’t have to accept reality! At first I just removed a door and added another window, then added some of the sky color into the windows. But then it seemed too busy, so I eliminated all the windows and added a wide door. Much better!

The barn color seemed a little dull, but was it the color of the barn that was off or the straight-out of-the-tube viridian green that dominated the grasses? I guessed the green, and spent quite a bit of time varying the shades of green, adding in strokes of blue, purple, yellow, orange and red. While I was painting the grasses, I was listening to Gypsy Caravan, a compilation CD of gypsy music from around the world. I can’t help but dance when I hear gypsy music, so I danced with my paintbrush and the meadow came alive with birds and grasses and flowers.

A stroke of bright cadmium green landed directly in front of the “man door” of the barn. A mistake, I wondered? I decided to wait and see – would that mark help tell the story or detract from it? I sat on my thinking couch and thought. There was something about the tension between the mark and the doorway that seemed to resonate with me. The more I looked, the more the mark became a figure, stopped along its journey, staring across the expanse of grass at the barn, the open door, the light beyond. I felt there was a yearning, a desire to enter the barn, but also a sense of fear and uncertainty – not knowing exactly how to get there without a clear path.

Once I started thinking about paths, I saw all the paths in the meadow, and started thinking about the journey through life, and how there are as many paths as there are people. And how for some people, choosing the “right” path is simple: They see one path and they stick to it. Others see many paths and have trouble choosing which one to take. And some start down one path, wander off the path, get lost, end up on a different path…

Once I got the concept of many paths and the standing figure, I decided the man-door needed a little more light coming through, so I brushed on a little yellow/white mix, which was a little too thin, so I wiped it with my rag and then – another figure, this one more defined, more developed (although seriously, just a paint smudge). And it dawned on me that the figure in the door was the same person as the figure in the grass. And they were manifestations of myself, the viewer, the figure walking into the scene, looking up the hill at the barn and the light beyond. Searching for my right path. Stuck without clear direction.

That figure in the grass had to go. It was causing the eye to stop there for too long; the tension was unbearable. So I painted it out. The figure in the doorway beckoned. The tension was released. But still the painting seemed to need one more element to heighten the drama without overwhelming the barn. Light! Rising or Setting, the sun brings hope and peace to the world.

And so, renamed, Sunrise, Sunset is finished in this incarnation.