View from the Looney Farm

Plein Air Oil on Canvas 10 x 17 Inches $950 Framed

I was working on another painting near Lexington off Rt. 39 when a woman pulled over in a pickup and said, “You've gotta come out to our farm and paint its view . . . Steven Spielberg says it's one of the best views in the world!” She went on to explain that he filmed “War of the Worlds” there, using the pasture across the street (on the left in this painting) as the Base Camp for the aliens' landing. So, after I finished the first painting I was working on, I drove out late in the afternoon to meet her at her farm house off 252 near the intersection at Bustleberg. (Interesting name, there wasn't a whole lot of “bustling” going on except the cows! Even more interesting, their last name was Looney! Yep, I painted that day on the Looney Farm!

I followed in my car until we came to a fence, and then I hiked up a hill, and turning around, I looked back over their house and across the valley to this view of the mountains to the west. I only got a start on this painting before the sun completely set. I walked back down the hill in darkness with my easel equipment and gear (trying to avoid the cow pies) to my car parked near the fence, and finished it from reference photo when I got back here to the studio in Richmond. What a day!

The cloud structures that evening allowed the sunlight to break through the clouds in shafts of dramatic light, which I tried to capture here. The two mountains on the left are Little House and Big House Mountains, and the one on the right is Jump Mountain.