In 1993, I painted a quick sketch of an early morning sunrise of a Paris street scene. The most magical thing about that morning was the red sun shining through a clearing mist. I've always wanted to do another, more thoughtful painting, of this idea.
Caspar David Friedrich is an artist I admire. The work of his pictured here, and the idea of something appearing through a mist contrasted with a detailed foreground, was also something I wanted to paint one day.
Sometimes when a see a tree, I get a feeling that it's watching me. It's such an uncanny feeling, but it doesn't happen with every tree. As I was driving along one day, I noticed the tree pictured here, and thought it would make a great painting. I returned to paint it as a silhouette against the sun, but something was holding me back. It was when I got back to the studio and thought about the progress of the picture that I thought it would be better to paint it as a tree in a mist with a red rising sun. At last all the ingredients presented themselves and 30 years later I finally painted a picture that had been at the back of my mind for decades.
