The Mountain Road III, ©John O’Grady 2015
Oil on deep edged panel, 8″ x 8″ x 1.5″
It does not require framing and is ready to hang.
This is the third work in this series of mountain road paintings.
A small winding road weaves its way through the Wicklow mountains. Open to the elements, it’s dwarfed by its surroundings and the swirling atmospheric conditions above. Up there, the roads are narrow, barely allowing one car to pass another. They scrawl their way over the bog, twisting and turning until they disappear over the horizon of a distant mountain.
I have often driven over the top when the weather closes in and you can’t see the road ahead as the cloud and mist and rain become one. Then as you descend, the clouds part and the light emerges. Bleak and damp, someone experiencing this might find it oppressive but this atmosphere has its own muted beauty. Once you go off the road, the mist muffles the sounds and the quiet and isolation are remarkable.
Have you experienced an isolation and quiet like this?
Hello John, yes I am fortunate enough to have experienced that sort of quiet and isolation and the sensation varies depending on whether it is in a forest, at the top of a mountain or on the coast but there is a particular empty beauty to being surrounded by mist; it muffles sound so that there is an enveloping stillness. What is impressive about your painting is that you have captured that feeling of emerging through the mist into light to see what lies ahead; raw nature and human creation.
Thank you Christine,
I agree the sensations do vary depending on where you are. I think that we subtly pick up on those different sensations but often don’t recognise our connection to them, if that makes sense.