Striving to capture the brilliance of sunlight is Chuck Mauldin’s favorite painting challenge. By using the common technique of closing one eye and squinting with the open one, the sunlit landscape—and objects within it—can be simplified into a pattern of shapes of light and shadow. 
Suppertime, oil on Claessens Linen #29, 20 x 30"Master painter Kevin Macpherson taught him to see that mental image in absolute terms. In other words, the shape is either in light or in shadow. Once this foundation of light-versus-dark values has been recognized, the real fun begins—the thrill of picking colors to express the intention of the painting. “Sunlight always means warm lights and cool shadows, which can be created with a vast array of interesting pigments,” Mauldin says. “It’s the point where art meets chemistry—a perfect place for the artist who is also a chemist. Many of my recent paintings, including the ones shown here, use a limited palette that does not contain blue. Rather, a blue is wondrously obtained by adding a small amount of dioxazine purple to viridian green.” Exploring magical combinations like this make painting even more fun for this creative artist.
Heavy Grazer, oil on Claessens Linen #29, 24 x 36"
Three’s a Herd, oil on panel, 14 x 18"
For Mauldin, nothing says “paint me” more than a sunlit cow in a Texas pasture. His fondness for cows, especially Herefords, traces back to his earliest years on a cattle ranch in northeast Texas. Now, firmly planted in the Texas Hill Country, the variety of flora and the terrain of the area provide an inspiring setting, with or without those fine-looking bovine browsers. —
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