Tag Archives: Landscape art

Landscape Painting?

View From a Train Window

(now in private collection)

Oil paint on canvas

…the experience of the landscape viewed in shorthand, the trick is to imply with the minimum of effort…

Unfortunately the majority of landscape art fails miserably. However, ‘Lake Lucerne: the Bay of Uri from above Brunnen‘ circa 1844 (by Turner) is the ultimate painting of landscape and nature – it tells a massive story with very little content. This has been an important painting for me since the early 1970’s. I have always admired the New York Abstract Expressionists of the mid 20th century but when I first saw this painting by Turner…… my sock were blown off. It is without doubt a clever (maybe unfinished) conceptual landscape painting.

Landscapes that are seen at speed, blurred, undefined, with a static, pinpoint horizon are better than watching TV. In many respects transferring theses visual clues into (in my case) paint gives a prompt, a reminder of the general feel of the landscape… an estimate, a representation/illusion takes on more realness than the actual physical object, the object then becomes a metaphor for the created illusion. This in turn creates an additional reference for the object, an extra visual adjective eg. ‘The sky was very Turneresque.’ Turner’s illusion becomes a metaphor for the real thing, which vividly describes [in words] the actual sky. The concrete object cannot say everything about itself – it has a limited vocabulary and is unable to say what is required of it. It is on many levels mute.

Sid Vicious painting for sale – $75.00

Whatever Happened to the Space Age” Original painting by Peter Bright. Media: Painting and Screen Print on canvas, signed and dated 2011.Size: 400mm x 400mm. Price includes shipping Continue reading ?

My Next Exhibition

These Are the Exmoor Landscapes I Couldn’t Paint

(Oil paint on board)

The six landscapes that form of the core of this exhibition were painted from memory. I tried to execute them ‘en plein air’ but it was the gorse season – no sooner was my easel erected than I fell prey to a severe asthma attack. After several puffs of Ventolin I gathered up all my paraphernalia, shoved it into the back of my Landrover and returned to the sterile safety of my own home, where I finished them off. My original idea was to follow the Monet concept and paint the vista at a given time (so the light, shadows etc. are time specific) – but I would be dead by now. So I gave myself a time limit of 90 minutes to complete the six indoors. I’m not a lover of landscape paintings – these images are a reaction to the environment, physical and visual. In truth I would be happier if Exmoor was concreted over and turned into an out of town shopping complex – I would get more pleasure from the space if it was.

Weedkiller Over Clematis

(Oil paint on canvas)

The fashion for gardening, for an asthmatic, is a cruel joke. We have been ‘doing’ the garden at our home and I made the mistake of planting several climbing plants – I now know I have another contact allergy! Yet again concrete is the only true solution to my problems. The larger paintings in this exhibition are based on the colours these climbing plants go when you spray them with weedkiller.