It seems our luck is improving. This was also a lovely day, and several of us spent the morning painting the more mannered and tamed landscape at Brookside Gardens – we had not been there since early May. It’s a truly beautiful place, but neither of the pieces I’ve done there has been satisfactory; I don’t know whether it’s just coincidence or something prompted by the very manicured appearance of the lawns, ponds, and trees, but on both occasions I’ve gotten bogged down early in too much detail and never managed to recover. Among the things I want to accomplish over the winter is a studio piece derived from those failed studies and from photographs, one that moves decisively away from representation towards abstraction: maybe that will help!