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Why landscape Painting?
Over the past while Magdalena Demianowicz, a student in the Arts
and Letters program at Vieux-Montreal in Quebec, has been
sending me some valuable questions: "I read in your biography
and saw by the paintings you do, that you mainly paint
landscapes these days. I would like to know why."
Thanks Magdalena. I've noticed that some universities these
days are still announcing that painting is dead and that
landscape painting is particularly dead. It is, however, not
something that I've noticed. Here's my shot at why landscapes
are likely to be with us for a while yet, and why I'll probably
continue working with them:
Our natural world is simply loaded with potentially creative
elements. Land, rocks, trees, water, sky--all hold pretty well
universal images. Think of all the combinations you can get
from those five alone. Beside the variety we have before us,
there's the variety of ways these elements can be individually
mixed, matched and reinterpreted. Like the family of man, the
world of wildlife, abstraction, and all the other genres, the
choices are pretty well infinite. Simply put, for those of us
who choose it, the elements of landscape offer a kind of
life-enhancing enrichment as well as challenging opportunities
for the development of style.
If you also think of painting as an opportunity for joy, then
perhaps the achievement of personal style is one of its more
joyous outcomes. Landscape painting involves a varying degree
of "getting it right," as well as doing something with it,
perhaps redesigning it. Except for those in some sort of
solitary confinement, everybody looks out at a view. Landscape
painters get joy by honoring and universalizing their personal
views.
All genres in art are valid. All are authentic. Creators who
take the student approach are gradually and endearingly turned
on to the life. Robert Bateman noted: "I can't conceive of
anything being more varied and rich and handsome than the planet
Earth. Its crowning beauty is the natural world. I want to
soak it up, to understand it as well as I can, and to absorb it.
And then I'd like to put it together and express it in my
paintings. This is the way I want to dedicate my work."
The above was placed on the net on November 30,2004
by Robert Genn, Artist
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