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The Landscape - Where we wander, reflect and dream.
Our landscape is like the inside of our home, comfortable yet marked by our existence.
But this is a home we share with every other person, and we have to be worried about what we are all doing to it.
Creative Extrapolation in Landscape painting
My aim is to create paintings which are interesting objects in themselves. Not mere reproductions of some actuality.
Each painting contains some feature or features which are recognisable to those familiar with the particular place, but I set these in a broader context which a free flowing interpretation - an imaginary setting of the intangible, a multi-dimensional atmosphere to emphasise the elusive, the transient or the ephemeral - which is, of course exactly what 'reality' does.
This takes the painting further away from actuality than 'expressionism' did, but is short of pure abstract. Enough!
My intention is to make pictures for people to enjoy. Pictures that are lively, colourful and interesting.
Landscape Art -
"The painter's first priority should be to provide a feast for the eye" - This is a quote allegedly from Delacroix (who lived in the first half of the 19th century, so I didn't know him well!), and I strive to deliver just that. BUT - Having spent my career in the artificial environment of large organisations, being pulled to paint in the hills was probably some kind of 'decompression'.
We are surrounded by and constantly reminded of the ecological destruction of mankind's relentless pursuit of economic growth.
The 'pastoral idyll' is not meaningless escapism. Landscape paintings can offer a counterpoint that is both a reminder of and an escape from the relentless awfulness of city life, to let the viewer see an alternative, to gain uplift, a boost to the soul AND to be reminded that our world is worth taking care of.
Where is that?
We all see the world through our own lenses - what we have learned. Our norms, values, perspectives give our brains the ability to categorise, and (hopefully) to appreciate everything we see, hear, smell, touch or taste.
Reactions to abstract art illustrate this with the often-asked question: "But what IS it?" and similarly any time I show landscape paintings, I am asked "Where is that?" as the viewer seeks this point of reference before they look deeper into the piece.
There is (of course) a term for this - 'evanescence' - which is the process by which the impact of a sensory experience fades, and hence my need to use the recognisable feature in extrapolationism to create a 'hook' for the viewers' memories.
Extrapolation is about the projection of layers beyond known values.
Many landscape artists have in the past presented their interpretation of a scene, expressed through some variation of the known. Extrapolation goes beyond this interpolation, with the purpose of creating a piece of art which will be respected as much for its own, intrinsic features as much as for its representation of actual features.
Given that it is likely that any painting will include some reflection of the artist's feelings when it was being created, and with a landscape those feeelings will be coloured by the sensations the artist has about that scene, it is likely that every landscape painting is to some extent 'expressionist'. This is certainly the case with extrapolationism as the created context is drawn from somewhere within and is laid down by the hand of the artist.
