South of Town by Randy Peyton

South of Town

Randy Peyton

Oil

24 x 36”

$4,850.00

Randy Peyton represents the new cohort of Texas Landscape Painters; leading a post Onderdonk generation of Bluebonnet Bounty.  Peyton has captured the Texas landscape like a scenic shaman, creating emotional and nostalgic reminiscences of days nurtured by the Texas heat- causing the viewer to relax in an art induced medicinal meditation.

South of Town, a 24 x 36” oil painting by Peyton is a classic example of a signature style; complete with Bluebonnets, Live Oaks, a small barn, a horse carriage trail, and semi-arid vegetation.  Peyton knows his role in the historical timeline of Texas Landscape painters and this prosperity allows his a certain freedom evident in his images.

Bluebonnets bookend the sides of the gravel path that snakes through the painting like a question mark- pulling your eye straight to the horizon line and over to the dominate Live Oak on the left side of the mid-ground.   To balance out the composition, Peyton places the wood paneled brown barn opposite of the ominous and mature tree.  The humbled hay hangar opens its wide doors showing a shadowed interior.  Deep obscurity hides straw bales and husbandry necessities. The roof peaks and pitches slant down to a diminutive corral- vacant of any animals.  Although the dirt trail shows signs of wear, the total intuitive emptiness of the location implies an abandoned site-a ranch hidden deep in the backwoods of Texas; a product of the times. 

Impressionistic bluebonnets are minimally detailed, allowing for assumptions of validity.  The official state flower of Texas is arranged in 7 neat patches of underbrush- each lining the trail to the barn. Spotted with yellow and pink flower variations, we see a deliberate attempt to establish geography, but not caring for a realistic rendition of regional Botany.  

The main players of this scenic sonata are the three Live Oaks that secure a stoic trifecta of Quercus fusiformis; each placed in strategic areas in the composition –far left, far right, and exact middle.

Accented with spare cactus and open skyline, Peyton’s work of art compels us to imagine ourselves in the typical barren desert-scape of the Southern United States- feeling the arid heat and listening to the sounds of crickets.

-By: Gabriel Diego Delgado

Art Consultant

J.R. Mooney Galleries of Fine Art