Landscape Paintings
People often ask why I paint the landscape — can painting the rural, the city or industrial environment offer anything new for the painter. Can it say anything that is relevant today, that is socially, politically and environmentally important, and can this make it a contemporary subject matter for the artist? The simple answer is yes! But let me explain why!
The notion of the artist in the landscape inspired by the view or the sublime coupled with a feeling of awe, wonder and fear in the mountains on a winter's day is really a romantic idea perpetuated by the Lakeland Romantic Poets, philosophers, publishers, hoteliers and Cumbrian tourist board. It conjures up images of daffodils blowing in the wind, summer breezes and a wistful reflection of long walks while high on Kendal Black Drop.
This is fine, for there is economic and cultural value in these images which attracts millions of tourists to the Lake District every year. They are attracted to the mountain tops, lakeside walks, forests, historic monuments, stone circles and river walks which etch through footfall in the physical landscape neural pathways within the collective imagination. It connects our past and present through a sense of place.
Dotted in between the valleys and Lakeland drives we have the large country hotels, towns, museums, villages, art galleries, pubs and National Trust properties, all honey pots that take the cash in exchange for a more authentic touch and feel experience. I have done it myself when visiting Dove Cottage, Brantwood and Beatrix Potter's cottage. I have looked through the broken fence of Fawe Park on the edge of Derwentwater and imagined Benjamin Bunny running amok!
These are all important ideas, they are invitations to find out more about the people and places that tell a wonderful story about our historic, cultural and economic past. They are great starting points for further research, to lay the foundations for a deeper, broader and more considered reflection on what the Lake District can actually offer the landscape painter.
So, where do we start?
In the academic world they call it a literature review. This is where you read everything possible associated with your interest and particular strand of enquiry. You find out what others have said about the Lakes, which is essentially to read and watch everything related the Lakeland Poets, tourism reports, news items, academic reports, archaeology, historic monuments, maps, Lakeland culture, festival, fairs, climate change, Facebook, Youtube Videos, business, agriculture, industry, novels, geography and scientific field studies.
This broad review begins to open up intellectual possibilities and a structure from which ideas about the landscape can begin to emerge and therefore hopefully inspire a deeper informed work of art that is rooted in knowledge and understanding. It essentially highlights multiple perspectives, all of which offers access points into understanding what you see and indeed what you may experience.
This intellectual framework is essentially consolidating a working methodology and a basis of professional artistic practice. It also helps to identify conscious and unconscious bias, for I am naturally drawn towards ideas that reflect upon working class perspectives and how communities are affected by the wider world. So you can always view my paintings through this lens, unlike viewing the landscape through a Claude glass. I am looking forwards not backwards.
It also helps to point out key features when out in the landscape which are geological, geographical, industrial, ecological and anthropological. This understanding opens up a different way of seeing the landscape helping to give a greater meaning to the observations and points of interest. You are looking at the landscape through the eyes of a geographer or a climate scientist which when coupled with knowledge of the Lakeland painters such as JMW Turner makes the whole experience much more enjoyable and indeed richer in every way.
Painting in the Landscape
However, none of this research makes any sense unless you actually work in the landscape and can apply this knowledge to the working context. I am not interested in the sublime, though without doubt I have been inspired and emotionally charged by seeing a swirling mist below the peaks of Helvellyn and Sharp Edge on a winter's day. What I am interested in is how climate change has affected the weather and if this climatic aberration is an anomaly or a reflection of changing weather patterns. Recent floods in the Lakes tells us the weather is changing and that the effects of climate change are observable, unmanageable and an economic disaster for local communities. Green algae bloom in Derwentwater stopped athletes swimming as part of triathlon, so a clear discernible effect of climate change. The colour green begins to emerge as a key idea within a painting which coupled with other colour observations which are empirical makes the art work a synthesis of knowledge and understanding.
The next stage is what academics call ethnographic research. This is where you simply engage with the local community, to immerse yourself in the spaces, networks and customs of a place. You talk to farmers, pub landlords, writers, artists, tourists, workers and business people to find out more about the local environment. They will give a unique insight into the issues, challenges and opportunities of living in a landscape. I have met a farmer who has watched as an 8 year old boy the Battle of Britain above his head, industrialists, gamekeepers, miners and policy makers within the National Parks, who all have a view on the landscape, its role and its function in the modern world.
Once this stage is completed and often it is an ongoing process, you can then perhaps feel a little more prepared to go into the landscape, to start thinking about making a work of art, or at least to begin the process of observational research and the exploration of the material process. This coupled with the physicality of working within the landscape makes the research more meaningful and therefore rooted in knowledge, observation and emotion which we call a phenomenological response.
In simple terms it is responding physically and emotionally to how you feel when in the landscape. This emotional driver is unpredictable and can often elicit a feeling of anger, rage, frustration, elation and fear. The subconscious can emerge through the guarded mind and appear on the paper or canvas as scapes, dabs, splashes of colour and expressive mark making. This is all research and simply adds to the range of content created available when making the final artwork.
Creating the Work
The next stage which can give the greatest amount of pleasure is to actually begin work in the landscape. You have decided in advance where to go, you have brought with you a range of materials and inspired by the chosen view. But of course all of the advanced preparation is now beginning to make sense, you know what you are looking at in terms of the physical features, the geology, the archaeology, the mythology, the local history and the geography.
All of this knowledge offers a starting point for the physical research and the visual enquiry. The materials you use will often determine the kind of marks you make and of course the technical approach will determine the visual output. This research may involve simple expressive marks or traditional perspective drawing. It all depends on your skill set and interest. For me a range of traditional and abstract approaches work best. This offers the painter more content and variety to draw upon when thinking about the final artwork created in the landscape or in the studio.
You are also responding to the appearance of physical phenomena, it can change colour within seconds and can in fact disappear. Memory and cognitive reflection can be deceptive, transcendental and existential. As an artist you are creating meaning and understanding within the context of your lived in and temporal experience. You are a physical, intellectual and emotional conduit for all that you see before you. You are in nature and part of nature, for your own physiological and biological being at an atomic level is all connected.
Though of course there is one variable which can completely alter the day and this is the weather. I have often set off in sunshine and painted in snow, this is what makes painting in the landscape so exciting and unpredictable. You may complete a work while in the landscape or you may take all of this research back in the studio, either way the painting is rooted in knowledge and experience which makes the work more authentic and indeed more connected to a place and an environment.
The final stage is deeply reflective, it is the synthesis of all your knowledge. You are trying to express something of the place in paint, something of the moment, but also something of your own history, so the marks and colours are all connected to observable and empirical visual stimuli. The artwork becomes rooted in all the ideas and images you have created or been inspired by.
Technically the painting is now about colour, texture, energy, harmony, scale, imagination, invention and balance. It is rooted in research but also rooted in the history of landscape painting for the two are inextricably linked within the final composition. Therefore do not be surprised if you see a Turner yellow enter the artwork or elements of Chinese calligraphic watercolour painting dominate the final image. It is all part of the dialectic mix!
Conclusion
So, in conclusion these artworks are the synthesis of research and knowledge and so just as important as any essay or academic report on the landscape. They are visual outputs and creative artworks that engage and reflect upon the landscape which makes them in my view contemporary in subject matter. They address ideas which are socially, politically, environmentally and artistically relevant in the modern world.
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