Badlands

"Badlands",  where strange formations tower over you in the seltering heat of this place caught somewhere between reality and abstraction.⁠
For this work I chose to use a range of differing reds, creating a monochromatic painting where the sense of  atmosphere is more important than the more tangible elements.
Using acrylic paints, I started the work with thin washes of colour, building up the composition from the outer dark areas towards the light.  I applied subsequent layers of paint, with thinner delicately blended paler layers receding into the distance and bolder brushmarks and darker colours creating a sense of foreground and height, adding strong diagonals to enliven the picture plane.
Within this imaged landscape, I finally added small contorted tree shapes, to strengthen the sense of a vast landscape surrounding and dwarfing them.