When Lynn Burton sent pictures of his latest paintings to Art Center Information, he sent along a description of his inspiration to paint them. In his own words, we are pleased to pass on his remarks to our fans about his painting, “The Red Sunset”.

“I was painting a sign in Dickens Texas about eighty miles north east  of here about ten years ago. The sign I was painting read, “Where in the Dickens is Dickens?” The question mark was great big…much bigger than the letters. There were a bunch of horses that were on the land that the sign was posted upon, and throughout the day, I took several photographs of them. While taking photos, I kept wishing they’d just run or do something exciting…something that would make a real good painting.

Anyway, about sundown when the sky turned mauve and the sun became that giant golden orb that it can only do out here on the Texas plains, the horses began running around in a big circle. It was a wonderment…an absolute wonderment to see. My heart started pounding with excitement and I reached for my camera. You know me, I’m just a an old Texan and a cowboy at heart, so I’m not going to tell you that my eyes teared up with emotion…no, I’m sure it was just a little sand blowing into them that watered them up. But I could hardly focus my eyes. I took shot after shot of this marvelous moment in nature, and, fortunately, a few of them turned out to be pretty good.

I always kept thinking that I ought to paint the picture. But I didn’t do it. The photographs continued to lay idle in my “to do” file. I read your article on “backlighting” a few weeks ago and I immediately thought of that day in Dickens and that magnificent scene with the horses. I used the technique in the painting.

We appreciate Lynn Burton’s letter describing his inspiration to do such a beautiful painting. He referred a blog post that his brother, Richard Burton, had posted for us a few weeks back. If you are interested in reading the post, simply click on the picture to the right>>>

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