The view from up here is great. The warships sliding this way and that keep the peace. No people are allowed up here but many generations of ibex call this impregnable fortress home.
There is Landscape and then there are Landscapes. I specialize in both I guess. Almost every morning I go out and draw what I see in nature. Often it’s a kind of nature journaling. This work most closely aligns with the traditional Landscape genre. Here are a few examples:
These are mostly landscape drawings not “paintings” per se. And they include lots of wildlife. Drawing is useful in that it allows me to quickly keep up with the things and “actors” I see as I view and participate in nature, the landscape.
When I’m in my studio however, “nature” is replaced by the art making practice and traditional art making materials: paper, watercolor paints, chalk, etc. And a different form of landscape emerges. The algorithm changes a bit. My emotions and judgements are fairly consistant but the questions I ask of them are quite different.
I have many more examples of both kinds of Landscape and landscapes. I’ve been in love with nature from the very start and focused on landscape-oriented art all through art school and graduate school, which in the 1980’s included photography and site-specific and traditional sculpture. My comfort in both ways of working, which are seamless to me, is their immediacy and directness and the challenges they offer me. And is no shortage of challenges to look forward to as my vocation evolves.
(And I should add, that my portfolio of illustrated children’s books trends decidedly to natural and animal subjects. So despite the differences in the questions asked of me, the answers come from a similar need to celebrate and hold up all that I can encompass of nature. It’s all congruent. What may seem like the work of a dilettante is whole cloth to me and I hope you see that too.
If you’re looking for a new way to forget the latest heat wave for a little while, try what I do: draw pictures of cold things, cold memories. My go-to is a snowy forest scene where the trees have their trunks sunk down in the snow. These are made with crayon or pastel. The snowy blue shadows might be colored pencil or watercolor. Have fun and stay cool.
Paint first, Think later. This is a good way to get started. But sometimes we have to wait a very long time for something less sublime to staff the picture. When the people and critters fail to appear, I realize that this is the way God intended it. We are surrounded by silent and mysterious landscapes. If only we’d listen!
This reminds me of Gulfoss waterfall in Iceland.
