Japanese Torii at Brooklyn Botanic Garden

Oil on canvas on archival panel
16” x 12”
$1120

I had thus far avoided painting this traditional torii at the Brooklyn Botanic Garden’s Japanese Hill-and-Pond Garden, mostly because it seemed too iconic and obvious as a subject. Eventually that vermilion red against the various shades of green in the background was impossible to resist. Plus the subdued brick color of the maple trees in the shadowed foreground added more red to the composition to make things even livelier. (I could have titled this painting “Study of Greens and Reds.”)

It’s origins come from a small watercolor I painted there a few months before.