Without realizing it I started a series of paintings of the Mississippi River in early 2021 on the levee where the Industrial Canal enters the River right at Holy Cross in New Orleans. Prior to that I had done some views of Natchez and completed a larger piece in November 2021. While working on the studio and transitioning into retirement, I took a trip to the Delta and Oxford to see my younger daughter and went up to Memphis to Tom Lee park to do a scene that I had sketched 3 years earlier. I completed a smaller field study that I liked a lot but I also started a larger version with a grey underpainting. High winds and limited time prevented me from working larger on site and so I had to take it home to complete it.
Back home I realized how I had compressed the scene into the dimensions of the canvas and so I spent time getting the arches of the bridge right and adding more river to the foreground for the large version. I did some work on this at home, took it up to NC and back, and then finished it last week while Christina was up there. There is a sharp difference between the treatment of the lower and upper halves of this painting. I still am not sure this will remain as is but for now, I am calling it finished. It was great to have the earlier study available as a reference and I like some aspects of it better than the enlarged version. Overall I am happy with the third installment of this series.
