Who's the man?

This guy is the man, William Wendt. My friend Don Sondag gave me a retrospective book of his work and it's a must have book for any landscape painter, In Natures Temple. I'll see if I can't find a link for buying it. If this book doesn't inspire you to be a stronger painter, nothing will.  Every single painting in this book is a masterpiece. His compositions are powerful, his color sense is flawless and his shape making skills are as good as it gets. What I see most in his work is a kind of confidence that comes from big strokes, big simple shapes and not over working a thing. I also found a painting of WW out in the field by William Alexander Griffith.

The one thing I always tell people in workshops is that you have to maintain clear separation of light and dark. Light side, shadow side, light side, shadow side. People get so lost in trying to get the color right that they lose their values. When you look at Wendts work this is what you notice first, just how simple his forms are. Why is this in bold face? I don't know. It just ended up that way. But sometimes having a a bold face in the right place just seems like the right thing to do.