Still Motion

By Dara Daniel

Piece description from the artist

"Still Motion" is an Acrylic on canvas of an orange/red horse with exaggerated colors to define the shadows and light. During my process, I remembered a quote from Robert Henry in his book "The Art Spirit": "If all the colors were bright, there is no brightness." The brightest colors in this painting are the shapes of oranges and blues in the front part of the horse coming toward the viewer. I used a palette knife to apply thick layers of paint to make this happen. Also, like many of my paintings, horses' perspective and foreshortening come into play.

After establishing the tonal values and colors for the horse, it took many layers of colors before I found a soft, warm neutral for the background. These were the colors that worked to pull this composition together. Many layers of paint are common in my artwork because often, I will paint on colors until I like the painting.