Winner, 3rd Place Watercolor, 2009 City of Palm Springs 11th Annual Art Show

This was another weekly "different strokes" painting challenge posed by Karin Jurick. I have to thank her for helping me break out of my normal routine. My usual "modus operandi" is to replicate a still life set-up or photograph I have taken. Since I knew that 70 or 80 people would be posting similar renditions of her cow, I wanted to try to do something different from Karin's photograph. I knew I wanted to move the horizon to accentuate the cow’s face, and I wanted to alter the composition a bit and change the time of day. The challenge got me thinking about creating a story rather than just painting what I saw. That’s what being an artist is supposed to be all about. Thanks to a workshop I took with Elin Pendleton I knew what colors to use to change the time of day. This was so much fun. I feel I’ve created a “work of art” rather than just reproducing a photograph. I’ve done hundreds of paintings over the past 30 years. I think this may be one of my favorites.