Radical Impressionist: A Mathematician Paints

In November-December of 2020 I continued a series of High Desert Color paintings, more colorful and abstract than previous paintings. This is the tale of one of the paintings, once titled "Hope on the Horizon" to accompany the new era in our country, to illustrate hope that soon we will be able to travel again.  I find solace in painting. It's a magical life. But I changed the title to Prismatic Spectrum. Stages of "Prismatic Spectrum (aka,Hope on the Horizon)", 9x12, oil I. Initial Wash The palette used is my usual Cobra Water-based Oil palette, prismatic from Cad yellow Light through different oranges and reds, mixed purple (cobalt blur plus permanent rose), blues  (cerulean blue hue, cobalt blue, ultramarine blue and greens (viridian and sap) as well as yellow ochre and burnt sienna. A brush was used primarily for this initial wash to establish the range of values (color-based). One can see touches of paper towel in the sky.  In addition, one can see palette

 I've been experimenting with the palette knife, perhaps using it as if it were a pastel stick, layering colors on top of previous colors to create a new color perhaps. For this post I will use or demonstrate a 3-color palette of a red, blue and a yellow to create 'all' colors. The specific colors I will be using are: Cobra Water-Mixable Oils - Madder Lake (R), Ultramarine Blue (B) and Permanent Yellow Light (Y) and Titanium White (W). The initial plein air layer was painted at the foot of the Catalina Mountains near Tucson. I then used my mountains, the Santa Rita Mountains, in my back yard to refine the painting. This might be the final version for this first example after applying several layers (click to enlarge to see the texture): Details for texture: Catalina Mountain Foothill Painting Site: And the painting while onsite. My painting buddies really liked this at that time.Perhaps I should have left it alone. But the dark shadows on the mountain bothered me. And the s