Title: Multicolor Ice and Mist I
Artist: Cathryn Cooper
Medium & Materials: Acrylic on canvas panel / cradled wood panel
Dimensions: 10" x 10"
Gallery Overview
Multicolor Ice and Mist I is an intimate square-format abstract landscape that captures the vivid meeting point between autumn warmth and winter atmosphere. Cathryn Cooper contrasts blazing golden-orange foliage with cool blue mist, frosted shadows, and a pale mountain sky, creating a compact work with remarkable depth, texture, and seasonal energy.
Artwork Description
Across a 10" x 10" canvas, Cathryn transforms a narrow New England valley into a refined study of light, weather, and woodland texture. The composition moves beyond traditional perspective, relying instead on layered acrylic washes, blocky texture, and calligraphic linework to make the crisp seasonal air feel tangible. The lower portion is grounded by a dark marsh floor and tangled undergrowth, built with deep indigo, slate blue, and charcoal passages that suggest frost, shadow, and dense vegetation.
Light, Color & Collector Appeal
The heart of the painting opens in a luminous central clearing, where cadmium orange, molten gold, and warm copper tones suggest the last brilliance of autumn foliage. This warmth is framed by cool periwinkle and icy-blue washes that veil the surrounding evergreens, creating the sensation of mist moving through the trees. Above the softened mountain ridge, a pale dawn sky filters cool light across the scene. Small in scale yet richly atmospheric, Multicolor Ice and Mist I offers collectors a vivid contemporary landscape with seasonal contrast, tactile surface, and quiet emotional presence.
Style & Composition
- Artistic Style: Abstract Impressionism, Lyrical Abstraction, and expressive tonalist landscape painting.
- Composition: Square-format woodland perspective structured by dark vertical tree forms, with a luminous triangular clearing of warm foliage set against a cool mist-filled forest atmosphere.
- Focal Point: The glowing central clearing where cadmium orange and golden-yellow foliage breaks against misted periwinkle-blue and charcoal tree lines.
- Color Palette: Intense cobalt, sapphire, and periwinkle blues balanced by fiery cadmium orange, golden ochre, soft silver-grey, ivory white, and charcoal shadow.
- Lighting & Atmosphere: Backlit morning light filtered through cool fog and mountain haze, casting the lower valley into shadow while giving the foliage a fresh, radiant seasonal glow.
Application & Technique
- Brushwork / Mark-Making: Loose, physical, and layered, with transparent washes building atmospheric depth, sharp calligraphic lines defining branches, and dry-brushed texture shaping the foliage.
- Layering & Depth: Dark saturated trunks and foreground textures pull forward, while low-contrast sky, mist, and distant mountain forms recede into atmospheric space.
- Materials: Heavy-body and fluid acrylic on prepared canvas-grain rigid support, applied with wide wash brushes and fine linework to preserve transparency, movement, and raw surface texture.
Inventory Status: Available for purchase online or in the gallery.
Shipping / Pickup: Shipping is available, with items securely packaged in professional archival materials, insured, and shipped globally; complimentary local pickup is also available at our 23 North Main Street gallery.
