Spill Gate, Late August Drawdown

This is the secondary gate on a ditch I have been visiting for eleven years — the one nobody greases anymore because the field it fed was sold and subdivided. I worked from pencil studies made on-site in August, when the concrete apron had gone almost white and the iron yoke was shedding rust in plates thin as onion skin. Twelve glazes of raw sienna and lead white before the shadow in the throat of the gate started to feel like actual darkness rather than paint.