Sunlight and Shadows

Today is a day of heavy flat light, laden with humidity and heat, here on the Georgia coast. All contours are softened, distances are blurred and somehow the scene is flat and almost featureless. It is a day that makes me long for the bright sharp sunlight of the Mediterranean. It also makes me realise how much landscape artists are influenced by the ambient light.

Think, for instance, of Japanese artists. Down the ages, in their nature-based art, the Japanese have been very aware of the play of light on rocks, trees, architecture. Shadows, the corollary of sunlight, are a natural function of their architecture, for example, with the broad eaves on buildings casting wonderful angled shadows. The ultimate interpretation of the beauty of light can be seen in their black lacquer ware, flecked with gold or silver. Viewed by lantern or candlelight, this lacquer ware evokes their northern, sea-influenced light in haunting fashion.

At the other extreme are Western artists who work in the brilliance of Mediterranean light. Take, for example, two of Spain's artists, Joaquin Sorolla from Valencia and Joaquin Mir from Barcelona. Sorolla was multi-faceted in his art, ranging from wonderful luminous portraits to vast historical paintings and, my favourites, landscapes flooded with light. In fact, a quote by Edmund Peel from James Gibbons Huneker, in the book, The Painter, Joaquin Sorolla, says it all: "Sorolla – the painter of vibrating sunshine without equal". It is interesting to study Sorolla's paintings: many of his landscapes which include figures have dramatically bold, abstract shadows (such as his paintings of Valencian fisher women). Yet landscapes done in Javea, Valencia or Malaga, in mainland Spain's Mediterranean coast, are often painted in a very narrow range of values, without dramatic shadows. Even more deliriously high key are some of his depictions of the almost incandescent cliffs and headlands in Mallorca, especially the sun-drenched scenes of Cala San Vicente in the north-east of the island.

"El mar en Mallorca" , Joaquin Sorolla

Interestingly, Mallorca, with its amazing light, was also the springboard for Joaquin Mir's greatest successes. A contemporary of Sorolla (who lived from 1863-1923), Mir was born in Barcelona in 1873 and lived until 1940. Colour and light were the keys to his art : "All I want is for my works to lighten the heart and flood the eyes and the soul with light", he said in 1928. He forged his own path to celebrating the Mediterranean sunlight and shadows, sometimes veering to realism, other times towards abstraction, but always seeking to interpret the beauty he saw in a delirium of colour and light. He borrowed the Impressionists' palette of colours, eschewing black, but he used the colours in his own highly original fashion. When you see Mir's works done in Mallorca, you can feel the wonderfully clear light pulsating over everything - the Es Baluard Museum has a number of these canvases (http://www.esbaluard.org).

Joaquim Mir i Trinxet (or Joaquin Mir, 1873-1940): Canyelles

Perhaps evoking the clarity of Mediterranean light will help banish the Georgian grey skies of humid heat – I can but hope!

"Seizing Nature as she is"

Pierre-Henri de Valenciennes was a French painter who lived from 1750 to 1819. He was an early advocate of painting directly from nature in order to produce landscapes. While in Rome from 1778 to 1782, he used to make landscape studies at different times of the day to catch the changes in light. As a result of this practice, one of the pieces of advice he developed for fellow painters was, "Work in haste, so as to seize nature as she is".

Pierre-Henri de Valenciennes - View of the Convent of Ara Coeli with Pines , 1780s, (Image courtesy of the Louvre)

I remembered this piece of advice with wry amusement as I sat painting in a beautiful Spanish garden, these past weeks, and struggled to keep pace with the changing light and the periodicity of flowers as they opened and closed at different times of the day. Working in the brilliant Mediterranean light of early summer is a delight, but humbling in that every hour makes a huge difference in the appearance of subject matter. Shadows on white walls that are entrancing at nine in the morning are long gone at ten o'clock. Fragrant, subtly-coloured nicotiana flowers (tobacco flowers) that are wide open at seven a.m. shut firmly a couple of hours later and do not open again until early evening. Their timing is closely linked to their attraction to moths who pollinate them enthusiastically in the nighttime hours. But painting under those conditions is another matter!

No wonder Pierre-Henri de Valenciennes was advocating speed and catching the most distinctive traits of that particular landscape when he was painting plein air in the Rome area. He, and every plein air artist since then has learned that nature is a severe task mistress when it come to painting outdoors.

Landscapes and a Sense of Place

I have been preparing for a solo exhibition I shall be having at the Southeast Georgia Health System in coastal Georgia in June, and chose the title of the show to be A Sense of Place. As I selected art to exhibit, it made me think again about how landscapes feed into an artist's sense of belonging somewhere.

Clearly, the better you know a place, the more you can enter into its inner workings. So you are better able to capture what that landscape means to you. The viewer can thus participate in and share more deeply in your experience. By grappling with the landscape as you get to know it, you allow yourself, and ultimately the viewer, to move beyond the merely representational. Your experience and knowledge become a passport for the viewer to understand and more deeply appreciate that place. Distilling one's own sense of place is an ever-ongoing activity because each landscape, natural or man made is continuously changing, developing, evolving. In many ways, this is good, because it means that an artist can return again and again to the same subject matter and learn more, thus portraying it differently each time in the art created.

Soaring over Creighton, watervolour, Jeannine Cook artist

Cezanne is a wonderful example of an artist who returned again and again to the same places to paint landscapes (think of his beloved Mont Sainte Victoire or the Jas deBouffan estate). He analysed a landscape, learned about the way the light moved and shaped things, organised his perceptions of form and colour. The resultant painting, in watercolour or oils, thus presents the viewer with, of course, the fundamental forms of the landscape, but beneath that veil of appearances, Cezanne captures the inner essence of that place, its soul. That is why his landscapes become so memorable, so powerful, so passionate and, at the same time, often, so intellectual and radical in their break with his contemporaries' approaches to art.

Mont Sainte Victoire, oil on canvas, 1904, Paul Cezanne (Image courtesy of the Philadelphia Museum)

The longer I live in coastal Georgia, the more subtle and beautiful the landscapes seem to me. It thus becomes an endless challenge to understand and simplify their essence, so that I might share their unique beauty and importance with others.

Is creating art a process of discovery?

It is often said that curiosity lies at the heart of all good art. Frequently, one has an idea about a subject to paint or draw, and the next thought is: why not try it in such and such a way technically, what if one includes x or y subject matter, or what if one approaches the subject altogether differently? In other words, how best to convey the inspiration? Since most artists are innately curious and observant, each drawing or painting turns into a voyage of discovery. Every piece of art has its own "voice" as well. So the artwork will, in essence, tell the artist how to draw or paint it. It is a question of being open, intuitive and attuned to what is happening on the canvas or paper.

Whatever the art being created, the artist will learn from the process of painting or drawing. I find that when I am doing a silverpoint drawing, I observe closely the subject I am depicting, partly because I want to understand it better but also because I am mindful that silverpoint is a severe taskmaster. You cannot erase the lines you make with the silver stylus on the prepared paper, so you live with what you put down. It is a good discipline because you try to understand the subject matter in order then to draw spontaneously. That spontaneity leads in turn to a stronger evocation of the subject.  Just as in other media, the silverpoint drawing technique should be the "silent partner" in the art making duo, playing the important but supporting role to the artist's curiosity and passion which engendered the art in the first place.

Think of Vincent Van Gogh's passionate curiosity. He embarked on extraordinary voyages of discovery every time he started a new painting, whether it was landscapes and scenes in and around Paris, Sunflowers, Dr. Gachet, the Yellow House or Cypresses. Each painting taught him something new and led him on to the next one in his headlong fevered creativity. 

The Yellow House, 1888, oil, Vincent van Gogh, (Image courtesy of the Van Gogh Museum, Amerstdam)

Each of us, as artists, aspires to retain that freshness and energy needed to exercise curiosity, to go on voyages of discovery. Those voyages can lead to the creation of good art.

La Bretagne, terre fertile pour les peintres

Lors d'un séjour récent en Bretagne, grâce aux Amis de la Grande Vigne, j'ai eu l'occasion de vérifier de nouveau l'attrait extraordinaire de ce pays breton pour les artistes. Cette Association fait sélection d'artistes pour les faciliter pendant un mois un Atelier d'artiste situé au port de Dinan (www.musees@dinan.fr).

Pendant mon séjour, je me suis retrouvée éblouie par les beautés naturelles si diverses de la campagne, de la mer et de la vallée de la Rivière Rance. Les villages et villes offrent également une richesse d'images à peindre ou à dessiner. Néanmoins, il m'a fallu un certain temps pour m'accoutumer, pour trouver "mon oeil" artistique. Même le climat demande une adaptation pour l'aquarelle car l'humidité et les changements très brusques de temps offrent des défis lorsque l'on travaille en plein air. J'ai bientôt compris pourquoi les peintres comme Henri Rivière et Mathurin Méheut ont utilisé la gouache pour leurs études en Bretagne: la gouache sèche bien plus vite que l'aquarelle.

La Baie de Radegonde, aquarelle, Jeannine Cook artiste

Cette expérience merveilleuse de travailler, en tant qu'artiste, en Bretagne m'a fait réfléchir de nouveau à la question posée par Mme. Marthe R. Severens dans son livre, Une Artiste, un Lieu et une Époque, sur l'artiste de la Caroline du Sud, Alice Ravenel Huger Smith. Est-ce que la stimulation de visiter et de connaître d'autres paysages inconnus aide beaucoup l'artiste dans sa quête de travailler bien? Ou est-ce que ce dépaysement empêche l'artiste de créer une oeuvre approfondie jusqu'à ce que une connaissance plus ample du lieu mène à des possibilités de peindre (or dessiner) quelque chose qui ne soit simplement qu'un "joli tableau"?

En fait, je trouve, personnellement, que plus je connais un endroit, plus il m'est facile de me retrouver libérée et ainsi prête à faire une interprétation personnelle artistique du paysage. Raison de plus, alors, pour me retrouver sous peu en Bretagne!