Thought process in landscape

Landscape as practiced day today works in the realm of pictorial.. Of the visual. Off course as a genre of painting which is a visual art form it is bound to be ‘visual interpretation’ of reality. It is ‘pictorial representation’ of three dimensional creation of omnipotent. But is it all? Converting 3D in 2D? This is where the question of thought and vision comes into ‘picture’.

The thought process in landscape may come in application on many levels. While painting a normal ‘picture’ also, artist has to think about what size , what media, which surface, which paper, and then in the scene in front, what to select , what not to select, and then how! These questions get varied in many sub questions which sometimes really irritate me personally when asked…. What paper, which shade of green/ brown, which brand of watercolours, which brush, which water!!!!! As if the bat makes run for Tendulkar or pitch at the most! These questions are in area of ‘thinking’…HOW. And then some are deeper…. Should I leave out that electric pole, should I draw some hen or sheep for rustic effect, should I draw human figure here for scale!!!! These questions are on WHAT.

The semblance of thought in both aspects here is very simplistic and rather beginner’s dilemmas.

The question of WHAT and HOW can encounter a ‘serious’ practitioner also. WHAT to paint? First let’s think about how we think about an on locale painting. We are going to a place to paint. We usually know the place through earlier visits or photos seen. So we know what we are visiting and planning starts with preconditioned ideas what a certain place will look and how we can paint as per our ‘style’. We are already decided what we are going to paint and we like a mechanic paint that with skill which is also predetermined. It’s all as per plan and we seldom encounter the ‘reality’ and seldom do we search.

I have always taken a fancy to a line I read long ago.

SEE A FINISHED PAINTING BEFORE YOU START.

Rather tricky. Unknown to ourselves we have already seen what we are going to paint. But that line may mean something different. TRY TO SEE THE PAINTING THE WAY YOU WILL FINISH KEEPING ASIDE THE NORM BY WHICH YOU USUALLY DO.

In such scenario you will start thinking. Your choice of paper, media and even brand is preconceived by your planned imagination of your landscape. “You say what is so great in that locale, lets do small sketches in Indian colours on handmade!” Or this spot is exciting and saleable!!! So let’s do a large work on Arches using Winsor and Newton and take hours of efforts to do a ‘great’ landscape and sale this!!!! Or win some award!!!!

Well, you lost something of the search which we have to do for becoming an artist.

So if we attempt to look at the spot through the eyes of a child… with amazement and awe and find something new each time, unadulterated by our earlier ‘ideating’ we are on a journey. Eyes of a child I say, as normally we all are childish but not childlike.

So neither shun a little plant on the steps as a subject as gimmicky nor a river thinking it’s too cliché. Nothing can be chosen as naïve or ‘different’ with previous baggage.

Then we start to really think. With a clean slate. And then all questions of What , How and Why will be relevant. Light falling on a hut will be enchanting on its own merit and not because a certain Prashant Prabhu has done that before and it was admired and it got sold. You will paint that because you asked yourself why, and then how? The questions will have your own answers apart from the ones given earlier by others. You may or may not paint a river. You may or may not paint a road. The light shining on the surface of the highway on afternoon may not enamor you and it may not pose you any questions. Fair enough.

But if you walk ahead and see a hut below a banyan tree beside a village road and feel like painting it… STOP for a second and again question yourself. WHY? Because you have always painted those huts under a tree with success? Then a little more walk will be good exercise for the brain 

Further we go deeper in this discussion, we come to realize that questions before us are not of quantum physics nor for solving the European economic crisis. We are simple people doing very simple things. And the thinking process is more of SEARCH than SOLVING. We don’t know even know sometimes what we are searching. We may only know what we are NOT searching. The more we think more we find that most of it has been taken care of by others…. They have already painted it for you!!!!

If we just decide to not to repeat…. Not to paint anything remotely similar to what you have done before…. And then to what anyone as done before…. Then you will not need much prodding. Then leaving out all that is ‘obvious’ you start thinking. Can I paint this too? I have painted once a dish antenna and its shadow on an outing in Yeoor in Thane. Well, some may call it a gimmick. But if you are honest then it won’t be. It will be surely a ‘circus’ who still have the norms and are still thinking with planning they did before they left the house and ‘thought’ about painting the huts in Yeoor by ‘catching the light”

So till now all this talk is still about ‘thought process” and still more on that. As far as vision, it is for another day.