Market Sq Newburyport in Autumn!

Instead of carefully describing every building, person and tree, I wanted to capture the feeling of being in Market Square on a beautiful autumn afternoon—the sunlight, movement, color and energy.

I let the forms dissolve, pushed the color, and allowed the brushwork to do some of the storytelling.

The purples in the shadows, the warm autumn foliage, the reflected light on the pavement, and those little figures moving through the square became more important to me than getting every detail exactly right.

This is one of the things I love most about plein-air painting: you aren’t really painting what you see—you are trying to paint what you feel.

Painted on location in Newburyport, Massachusetts.

— Richard Burke Jones

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