Cypress, Turning Sky

Description

The sky here was painted in a single long session, wet into wet, working outward from the two brightest halos so the spirals had somewhere to start. The village underneath was put in last and kept deliberately quiet — small blocks of ochre and slate, almost no drawing — so that nothing competes with the movement above it. The cypress is the thickest paint on the canvas; in raking light you can see the knife marks running up it.