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This painting is a cumulative tribute to American impressionists. More specifically and on the top of my list would be William Merrit Chase, Willard Leroy Metcalf and Theodore Robinson. The influence here most closely comes from Chase in terms of color, light, application of paint and compositional arrangement.

One thing that intrigued me most about these painters are the proportions of the canvases they paint on. They are painting on rectangles that are fairly close to becoming squares, being only slightly longer in width as opposed to height. I thought this to be strange at first, thinking that it would be more conducive to paint on a canvas that would showcase the openness of a landscape that a more horizontal composition would yield. Yet their compositions are just so spot on and solid; they feel at ease because of a high level of sensitivity to the composition.

I decided to take it upon myself to go out and paint, and I had been eyeing this view for a while. My goal was to capture a wide range of color and light without over painting. I wanted to challenge myself with an asymmetrical composition within the constraints of a square border. Painting with rush hour traffic on Nod Road also added to the intensity and my enjoyment of working on this landscape.