When I sat down to begin my thoughts on how I approach composition in my paintings it provoked a series of questions about why I choose to paint particular subjects and what then guides the way I lay out a landscape.
You may have heard about ‘the golden mean’ and the rule of thirds, and these are useful guidelines in creating a satisfying composition. You may also know the general rules of perspective and how to create a realistic illusion of three-dimensional space on a two-dimensional surface like a canvas.
But this doesn’t answer the question of why I personally choose a particular landscape to paint. A painting typically takes me over a month to complete which is a big commitment of time and effort. I have to be strongly motivated by an idea to put in that much time and effort, and then to believe that I can capture the idea successfully.
I have been painting in oils and selling my work since the beginning of my student days, 57 years ago. It helped fund me through university and my degree in biochemistry and physiology.
It was pure luck that a love of the drama and moods of landscape and a love of painting came together as a means of earning extra cash, but I didn’t set out to paint with money in mind.
On the other hand, it did motivate me to set aside time for painting when, as a student, I would have had to earn money through other perhaps more humdrum holiday jobs.
In my embryonic beginnings as an oil painter I didn’t really feel competent to take on specific commissions – I was a novice – and even though people were prepared to pay for my paintings I had very little idea what made my paintings desirable.
But in thinking about this, I came to the conclusion that if I found something arresting about the mood of a landscape and could manifest this in my pictures, then the same things would resonate in other people – sufficiently for them to buy my work and put it on their walls.
I came to that most important of realisations – people don’t buy pictures with their rational, intellectual minds. Rather they buy pictures purely on gut instinct. There is nothing rational about our idea of beauty and of what beguiles us – in reality it’s arises from our instincts, our animal natures. That’s the basis of our love of landscape and of nearly everything else in the expressive arts. I decided there and then that I should only paint what my own gut instinct appreciates. Each painting has to be motivated by genuinely strong feelings.
If a painting is purely a technical exercise then it becomes boring and I soon run out of patience. It will probably also be boring to others who view it. So it has to be gut instinct first and foremost.
There are plenty of struggles awaiting the aspiring artist, most notably in finding techniques to deliver the power of the imagery they want to paint. That technical part is an intellectual challenge. It takes patience and subtlety, and enough persistence to see it through. I use very different techniques in my brushwork and in my methods of paint application in different parts of a picture. And each part of a landscape painting has to play its part in the narrative of the whole picture.
Sometimes, in experimenting with an area on the canvas, I get a result that hits the bullseye, but it then becomes so powerful in its effect that it dominates the composition, when all it needed to be was a supporting act. There are many features in the textural complexity of a landscape that can disrupt the intended balance and movement of the eye around a picture.
A delightfully painted area that pleases me, in and of itself, may nevertheless have to have its definition reduced in order that it be kept in its proper place in a composition – but that’s a subject for another time.
Returning then, to the question of what makes a painting desirable; landscapes draw us in for various reasons –
It may be the natural beauty of the image – its forms and colours, or it may be the drama, e.g.of the power of surging water, the immensity of a mountain, a cliff, a gorge, or it may be the drama or the pleasure of a human event played out through the relationships of people in the picture.
Whatever the core element of the painting is, the composition will, in effect, be a narrative journey through its pictorial space. We imaginatively project ourselves into that space either as participants or observers and that imbues our minds with feelings, kindling associations with our own experiences, or our desires about having such experiences.
Being drawn into the narrative of the painting then invites us to soak up its atmosphere and even further that narrative onward within our own imaginations. This is what the Germans call the “gestalt”. We don’t have an equivalent word, but in essence it means we are looking to complete the pattern, the picture, the narrative, in order to find a satisfying conclusion.
This means that what is left unsaid in a work of art is just as important as what is said. In effect we lay out a plan, a structure, a narrative, but leave some areas less-well defined or even missing so viewers can fill it in for themselves. It becomes an invitation for the viewer to to take the image forward in whatever way they want. They take the gestalt presented in the picture and complete it for themselves.
But that’s another story for another time.