We have discussed skill till now in detail. Skill is what makes one adept at his own craft or work. It makes him efficient but not quite an artist. Skill makes him better worker and he brings smoothness in others lives but beauty? That is where art and talent or art comes in.

Art, may it be any art form, music to painting, is a most non essential yet with a capacity to have profound effect on human life. It maybe preposterous for logical minded intellectuals but arts is what separates man from other beings. World is full of art and beauty but we the humans are blessed with capacity to appreciate it..... in trees and in tigers who themselves have no idea that they are beautiful. So the talent for art is what separates humans from others.

Now, the ability to ‘create’ the art or works of art is what separates the human society. On one side is large sea of humanity who yearns to make their life beautiful and on the other side we are their servants, artists. One may take objection to the word servant, so we may say in service…like missionaries of charity…missionaries of beauty. The miniscule minority is in service to use the talent with passion to serve and make their life beautiful and sometimes guide them.

Now who forms this minority? Who has the divine grace and power to serve the humanity? Ones with talent. So lets discuss talent with specific focus with our dear subject of landscape painting.

As I often have said, we see a plethora of landscape painters. Those who paint landscapes with skill. Why landscapes is so popular ? Well, being a little harsh lets admit it’s a subject which requires least amount of effort to produce a quantity if you neglect the uneasy question of quality. Go on any free day, and paint a pretty picture, in true English tradition. And watercolours are so easy to paint plainly if, again the uneasy question of quality and depth is neglected. After all watercolours were first called tinted sketches. Simply painted sketches or studies for doing larger works in oils. Thanks to the fellow Turner that we can call them paintings now. And is considered a serious medium. And to be fair, the landscape itself in any media was more of backdrop till Impressionists.

So lets focus. Talent. It’s a magic potion that separates ‘artists’ from ‘painters’ of landscapes. Can we define the word talent or explain it like skill? Well, we need to be poetic to explain whats beyond logic and what is in realm of esoteric or occult. To paint a village scene with bullock cart or women with water pails or huts under trees is possible with skill. How about painting village life with none of these. Hot afternoon sunlight burning the old men waiting for the bus which is late by hours? A child playing with makeshift toys .... basically not painting the picture which we city folk have about villages. Or what we know that city dwellers expect a village scene to be! Basically not paint anything by the expected norms as far as subject and its depiction is concerned.

Even this is not that clear. Basically landscape stagnates on mediocrity when it ‘illustrates’ or ‘depicts’ a place or location. ‘leaving out’ and ‘adding in’ objects or people or any thing, isn’t what we are talking here. Nor even atmosphere. While discussing talent, we are aiming at the experience of the painter. Not just visual sensation, but feeling. What happens to the core of his ‘artist’ inside when he sees a scene. So you need not run behind the scene but see inside. And find what you experienced what you felt apart from the ‘picture’. And the ability to fathom this, and go beyond the need to transfer ‘picture in front’ to the paper in your capacity ...like said earlier 3D to 2D; To paint the ‘non obvious’ without making any deliberate effort to paint the non obvious. To paint the mundane beautifully and not avoiding the beautiful also.

To paint what is beautiful is easy and also tricky. Its easy to ‘transfer’ what is already beautiful and feel happy. And its also easy to shy away from it as its so low brow. The trick is to paint what lies beyond the surface. To paint the beauty of the beautiful, in a ‘different’ way. To ‘guide’ the humanity…to serve them different facets .

And also to paint mundane is also easy and tricky at same time. Its obviously ‘not so obvious’. To be able to paint the mundane with surety of being different. But that ‘being different’ lies in the subject matter. So many ‘experimental’ painters of landscapes are prone to get in the trap of ‘painting that neglected parts’. They also just ‘transfer’ the mundane on the paper and feel experimental. By my own experience, it feels really 'off track' to paint a water pump or a letter pox or a window. The question arises what makes you paint and how you translate that feeling on the paper.

So the talent lies in painting your own experience. And that is ‘different’ than mass produced painting …. Its an indication of talent. An ability to see the things with a different eye and with intelligence or feeling and convey it with enough skill. All with requisite measure. And talking about mass produced... prolific output of an artist is NOT an indication of talent. One can churn out large number on each holiday, but without substance. Will talk about this later :-)

So somehow, it seems that ‘talent’ is God gift. Well, yes. And every individual has talent. But very few has talent for ‘landscape’ painting. And for each art there are only few ‘talented artists’. And its true for all walks of life.

As we are talking about landscape, the specifics come in picture.

Basically with all the talk till now, we only deduce that ‘talent’ lies in not painting the ordinary stuff in ordinary way. It’s a knack of being different without making a ‘circus’ of art of landscape. It’s the grace which endows one with not only skill, and perseverance but also thinking ability and guts to brake the shackles of norms and traditions with the one divine input, vision. That grace.... what is usually called as 1% inspiration ..... is talent.