The doomed landscape painter

When reading an essay on drawing landscape by my tutor, and artist, Davis Walker Barker a sentence seemed to jump out at me, "there is too much to see and grasp when making a visual account of first impressions let alone taking an image beyond that first stage." This seems to sum up my current problems with landscape. The landscape is vast and highly detailed, it would be impossible to create an artwork recreating such awesome imagery. For me, I realize, it is about taking what you need from the land, maybe some forms and colours, but mainly its about the experience. The way in which we, as humans, are drawn to nature, our own personal feelings and interactions with the landscape intrigues me. As children we explore the land, its seems to me that as we age we become more fascinated by our surroundings and my artwork serves as a reflection on this process.



So this is my latest artwork. It is a wooden box with a base of clay with photographs pressed into, it has a thick layer of wax with areas removed to show the base. On the surface i applied oil paint in areas or pressed paint into the wax using a spatula whilst it set. Basically, it is a multimedia piece. So what on Earth is it all about... Well, I can give no distinctive answer to that question, but there is certain links that i can point out. Firstly, the photographs in the base of the piece are of the ruins at Lindisfarne priory, being placed at the base of the artwork there is only parts of these photographs on display. I feel that there is dual reasoning for why I did this, there is links to archaeology, these photographs, in a sense, are buried within the artwork and this to me is suggestive of the way in which ruins are discovered. I also find it interesting that the photographs are unrecognizable, it is extremely difficult to guess what the image shows. I think this adds to this sense of ambiguity that is attached to places of historical relevance.
I really like working with wax as a material. As mentioned previously, the way in which wax can distort and cloud imagery I find very interesting. I also like the physicality of wax, the different ways in which you can work it as it hardens. It is a forever changing process, and things are only possible during short time windows when the wax is in the right state to be worked i a particular way. There is something quite 'alive' about wax, whether it is the way in which it changes over time or the textural quality it really does seem to be an intriguing substance.
There is minimal painting in this piece, mainly due to the fact that I didn't feel it was necessary. Through the paint there are suggestions of colour and forms, I personally see links to the the sea and architecture but this is a personal reflection and I imagine everyone would make there own connections.
I think it's time to get back into nature now, next step is on location drawings...