Cypress Reflections by Richard Wieth is a vertical oil painting of tall trunks standing at the edge of still water. A row of dark brown trunks crosses the middle of the canvas, and several of them flare at the base where they meet the waterline. The widest trunk sits near the center, just right of middle, and spreads out like a skirt at its foot. Above, long strands of pale green hang in loose vertical streaks across the top half of the picture. Below the waterline the trunks return as darker, wavering shapes, so the canvas divides almost evenly between the trees and their reflection. There is no open sky or distant horizon, and the view stays close to the water's edge.
Greens carry the painting. Teal, sea green, mint, olive and yellow-green fill the upper canopy, and Richard Wieth lets them lean cool and gray in the shadows. Behind the trunks a band of golden ochre and warm yellow glows at mid-height, the warmest passage in the picture, with small touches of salmon pink along the shoreline. The trunks themselves are deep brown, plum and violet-gray, with strokes of blue running through them. Violet sits opposite yellow, so the dark trunks stand out cleanly against the golden band, while the blues and greens repeated in the water tie the lower half back to the canopy.
Light arrives as patches rather than outlines. The hanging strands are made of short vertical dabs, with pale mint set beside darker teal so the whole canopy seems to shift. On the trunks, lighter brown and pink strokes catch the light and turn flat shapes into rounded forms. In the water, flat horizontal strokes of cream, pale yellow and soft blue read as sky light bouncing off the surface, and the dark reflections stretch and break across them, so the water looks gently moving instead of glassy.
The background is not separated from the trees. Canopy, ground and water are all built from short, squared strokes, some thick and creamy, others dragged thin so the weave of the canvas and the layers beneath show through. Edges in the upper half stay soft and open, while the shoreline and the trunk bases are firmer and darker. The result is a surface that reads as a field of marks up close and settles into trees and water from a few steps back.
The central flared trunk is where the eye lands first, since its dark column and its reflection make the strongest value contrast in the painting. From there the eye follows the golden band left and right, then drops into the pale patches of the water. Vertical trunks and hanging strands play against the horizontal bands of shore and water, which keeps the composition steady. Richard Wieth signed it WIETH in blue at the lower right. This cypress tree oil painting measures 20 x 16 inches, oil on canvas, and is sold unframed, so it should be framed before it is displayed. It suits a living room, dining room, entry, bedroom or office. A warm walnut or gold-toned frame would pick up the ochre, while a thin dark float frame would give a cleaner look.
