Larry Groff interviews painter Lucy MacGillis about her work.

MacGillis comments: "I always paint from life. In the landscape I remove and add where it works best for the painting, but I’m out there. The experience of being physically in the landscape I’m painting is important, the heat, the smells, the sounds of the nearby sheep, the train’s distant horn, the light. I’m convinced that it all plays into the feel of the painting and I react to all this. There is so much to see and the longer you look the more you find. I look for shapes, I forget what object I’m painting, just look and mix and put paint down… I like to simplify what I see, push it into abstraction. I make marks with the palette knife or a large flat brush. I scrape down a lot, mix strange greys, mixing compliments… I work on some paintings for months, others just happen in a couple of sittings. I enjoy the faster paintings most..see I’m painting this very sort of picturesque landscape here, I don’t want to make pretty paintings, so I’m looking at planes and color and trying not too get too hung up with insignificant details."