Springtime in Ashland, Oregon comes to life between the snow capped mountain peaks and the spring buds in the valley. Squiggly groves of Oak trees are punctuated by cartoonish spheres of mistletoe, which stereotypically grow among holly bushes.

At Lower Table Rock we hiked in the morning where the fog burned off as we walked uphill. We ran down the cloud cover, climbing into the chilly mist. The fog muted the morning colors, where the electric green moss highlighted the branches’ Suesical stance.

In Oak Tree with Mistletoe I tried to pay homage to the digital art I’ve been jamming to and following on Instagram in the antiquated, Impressionistic style I’ve fallen into in the last few years.

By mirroring the image on two textured panels, accentuating the angles and punching up colors, I sought to fuse organic and digital themes with Van Gogh-inspired brush strokes applied with poster art in mind. They’re painted from a photo I snapped with my iPhone5s and manipulated with Instagram filters.

The panels were salvaged while helping to clean out a relatives’ garage, cleaned and then gessoed with a squishy foam brush in order to prep even the grooves in the pine frame.

The panels were methodically laid out in pencil, than acrylic and finished with oil paint, most importantly, Paynes grey, a purple-based deep grey, an A+ art teacher and dear friend recommended as an alternative to black. The purple hues pull the pieces together, but the electric green was achieved by liberally mixing canary yellow with the littlest bit of blue.

Besides my new best friend, Paynes Grey and the XL tube of ivory white my mother treated me to this Christmas, all of the rich oil layers of color were brought to you by my grandmother, who left behind an antique makeup box chalk full of half-used tubes when she relocated to the nursing home about five years ago. I’m pretty sure she would hate these panels, but also positive she’d be thrilled one of her grandchildren was putting her old canvas stretcher to work several times a year.