Bringing a “thought” into play in your landscape is rather a “modern” or “contemporary” way and is yet to be practiced by a significant number of artists. But another line which is largely prefered way of finding your own 'style' is on the path of visual and it is usually simplification and abstraction.
When one is planning a landscape looking at location - but not planning beforehand which brings out usually mediocre works- thousands of things and colours can be seen by the artist. In a jungle for a common man, there is green trees all around but for a painter hundreds of different hues of green and so many different shapes , sizes and textures in each tree. And automatically as the painter cannot replicate the whole, he chooses a few greens of his choice and few shapes of trees and gets done with it. Now that is not the simplification we are discussing here. Thats is simplification out of compulsion or plain inability if one may say so. Unless you are a photo realistic painter, this kind of simplification is normal way to do landscapes. This simplification is practiced without that much thought and who wants to paint each leaf anyways!
When a painter simplifies a tree or a building, he knows that the viewer has the ability to interpret its 'symbolism'. But lets go deeper. Usually all of us are adapt at simplification of each 'thing' in the work, each object, but the whole landscape looks a bit cluttered. We feel that many times after we finished. Or the painter may delude himself that he has painted everything simplified while putting lot of 'things' on paper! And some more intelligent will 'remove' certain things as 'it is not required”. Delete the unnecessary.
Ok. Quite smart thing to do. But why not paint only that much which is 'very essential' or 'utmost important' ? Paint only that much without which work will not be there!!! Instead of deleting, why not 'add' on the whiteness of paper what is most required for the work to come into being?
And we 'see' which object to put and which not to. But the moment you start looking them at objects a slight attempt of 'illustrating' the object 'properly' begins on a subconscious level. Artist may not even know it. So the key is consciously see only shapes , and see which are very necessary for the painting to happen. The 'details' of the objects are painted or indicated while we paint the 'objects'. But they can be indicated without painting 'exact' and can we paint smaller sub shapes inside bigger shapes?
And same we can do with colours and lines. Only the most necesary colours...minimum required colours and minimum lines.
Frankly this is my favoured approach. Minimalist one may say. This can be a part of the answer to the question what is to be different in landscape? And this also requires a lot of thought process. Choosing the most essential may be the intention but in the flow of things, we usually paint, paint and paint. And mind you, its very addictive and self satisfying when you can paint with efficiency and find pleasure. But the key is to be aware when to stop. An artist should know when to stop, is very cliched line. I would say artist, especially on locale landscape painter, has to know when he has to stop 'selecting more and more objects' for the painting.
Simplify to the extent that the viewer should be questioning what and where is the place. And when he fails to 'identify' the place we can hope that he will entre into the aesthetic aspects of the work rather than 'record' of the place. The viewer better be in awe of the outlook or vision of the artist than the ability.
And further you go on the path abstraction will happen.Abstract is after all painting the forms, colours , shapes, textures and lines. No identifying 'thing'. Even symbols may not be identifiable objects. But pure abstraction is not the aim for the painter of landscape here. This yearning for simplification is for the one who streches the imagination to the boundry of realism.... yet doesnt 'represent or depict'.
For abstraction in landscape ...for another day.
True ..only if one knows the thin line between being minimalistic and oversimplification just for heck of it.
ReplyDeleteOver or under... in anything from exposure to simplification is relative. Ultimate test is your own liking and experiments.
ReplyDeleteOversimplification.. the word itself denotes excess... opposit of minimal. So we may assume simplification where its not necessary or not serving the purpose or simplifying the whole painting without varying degrees. ... all of these cases and many more types of "oversimplification" are not whats meant by minimalism. Simplification are one of the ways towards milimalist approach n arguably most followed. But a minimalist work may not have simplification of the forms . Or a certain work with lot of simplification may not be minimal with lot of clutter.
As I have said earlier, we see simplification of forms in throughout the whole work but the work itself remains only skillfull clutterd landscape.
ReplyDeleteN few artists do intricate pen ink works with detailed hatching, stippling n lot of detail inside the shapes or objects but the final effect is quintessesntially minimal.