Here is “Lit Up.”
![](https://www.artbycedar.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/01/Lit-Up-800x794.jpg)
This painting was inspired by this photo I took on a forest hike during a road trip through California last summer. When I walk through a forest, I cannot resist taking photos anytime I see something striking. Most of the photos I take don’t directly end up as paintings, but I save them and they keep the imagery wheels turning in my mind. When I go back to scroll through them, sometimes one of them jumps out at me and tells me that it needs to be a painting!
![](https://www.artbycedar.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/01/Lit-Up-Reference-Photo-533x800.jpg)
The impossibly bright sky behind the impossibly tall trees is an image that makes the heart soar.
![](https://www.artbycedar.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/01/Lit-Up-2-Insta.jpg)
In the foreground, the deciduous leaves closer to the forest floor pick up the light of the sun. In the painting, I push the bright colors of the sunlit leaves into an almost neon yellow for dramatic impact.
![](https://www.artbycedar.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/01/Lit-Up-detail-1-Insta.jpg)
The large leaves in the foreground are a contrast of the tiny branches of the redwoods in the distance, so far above us that we cannot see the details.
![](https://www.artbycedar.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/01/Lit-Up-detail-5-533x800.jpg)
![](https://www.artbycedar.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/01/Lit-Up-Scale.jpg)
The sun bursts around the edge of one of the trees, visually erasing part of the tree trunk as the sunlight takes over.
![](https://www.artbycedar.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/01/Lit-Up-detail-2.jpg)
The small branches in corner are painted in unexpected blue and purple tones.
![](https://www.artbycedar.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/01/Lit-Up-detail-3-Insta.jpg)
Rough brush strokes hint at the roughly textured bark of the redwood trees.
![](https://www.artbycedar.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/01/Lit-Up-detail-4-533x800.jpg)
This painting is made on a heavy cradled wooden panel. The edges are 2.5″ deep, which makes the painting protrude from the wall dramatically.
![](https://www.artbycedar.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/01/Lit-Up-detail-6.jpg)
It is a light, bright, airy, sunny image.
![](https://www.artbycedar.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/01/Lit-Up-detail-7.jpg)
![](https://www.artbycedar.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/01/Lit-Up-3-Insta.jpg)
Feel free to contact me with any questions about purchasing the original, or if you’d like to order a print of this painting.
![](https://www.artbycedar.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/01/Lit-Up-Cedar-Studio-Scale.jpg)