Barns and Coop in Winter

Outbuildings in Winter    12 x 12 Acrylic on Canvas

When we first moved to our little farm, my husband remarked "I see a lot of sweet paintings of farm buildings coming up."  Well, that was over 4 years ago and this is my first painting of the farm buildings! My paintings got distracted by the farm critters. (He is an architect and I am the livestock person, after all.)

These are three of the eight structures of Squash Blossom Farm. I truly love how our barn, loafing shed and coop form one half of a little courtyard on our farm and the garage and house enclose the other two sides. And after living with the vivid red outbuildings in the comparatively colorless winter, I would never want them to be any other color.

Landscape painting, particularly of buildings, is not really my forte'.  I don't know if I am even capable of painting straight, square lines, let alone want to. Crookedly lines and crazy angles seem to have much more character to me (good thing Rog is the architect of the family, not me!) But I managed to get this straight enough that maybe the crookedy parts convey the century-old settling of the buildings.

This painting is 12 inches square - pretty small for me.  If I am going to paint this miniature, I am going to have to invest in some smaller brushes- it's hard to get much detail with #12  bristle flats!