Sometimes you just have to give up

Every time I walked the dogs to the top of the hill near  Castle Tucker in Wiscasset, the village scene below seemed just made for painting. The idea of painting the village in spring had long percolated in my mind, and I would often take photos for reference.

I knew that that the painting I wanted to do would involve a great deal of artistic license, as some of the areas and landmarks I wanted to show cannot be simultaneously seen from a single viewpoint.

After a number of false starts and reworkings, I was forced to re-evaluate where this was going, and the answer was "Nowhere". So, rather than painting myself further into a corner, I admitted temporary defeat, gessoed over this false start (not out of pique, but because I didn't have another canvas that size and I was simultaneously building a frame for that canvas).

A future post will show the (happier) outcome of this experiment.