Painting at the Marshes

One of the things I love about northern Utah is the variety in the landscape within a relatively small geographical area. One day I can be painting in the mountains, the next the desert, then rural farmland and even in marshland, the subject of this blog post. There is a lot of marshland along the eastern shores of the Great Salt Lake, in particular near Farmington Bay. This area is managed by the Utah Division of Wildlife Resources to provide a variety of habitats for all kinds of migratory birds. The Great Salt Lake is an important stop for migrating birds, it's a place where they can rest up and nourish themselves to prepare for the next leg of the trip. It's also a good place for a landscape artist to nourish himself visually since it's an area not like many others. I did two paintings on my autumn day trip to Farmington Bay, the first was this 8X10 with a view of one of the canals of water that connects two ponds and the Oquirrh mountains in the distance. I used a palette knife underpainting to create texture and finished up with some brushwork for the reeds and other details.



After that painting I had my lunch then did a lot of exploring and then decided to get one more small painting in before the sun set.