Blog

Every once in a while, a landscape painting like this one stumbles off my easel into my studio. This is the way I would like many more of my landscapes to look. Why don’t they? Cowardice.

I do have several paintings in this narrow category; I call their style “Essentialism,” because I am very careful not to include anything that does not materially advance the work.

The most striking qualities of this painting are the light and the fluidity of the paint-work. One essential feature that makes this effect is the flooding of light beyond the disk of the sun, bleaching out the leaves and branches nearby. Another necessary component of the brilliance of light is the combination of shadow and reflection on the road.

Not necessary in this work are specifically painted leaves. Instead, we see blobs that represent leafy branches, and we accept and understand them. The branches and bundles of leaves are essential; no single leaf needs to appear.

So I call this type of representation, “Essentialism.”

I do have to take care to build a painting, regardless of the superficial style, in a way that intrigues and satisfies the eye. For this one I played with many nesting rectangles. I call them rectangles, but no drafting instructor or geometry teacher would accept them as such.

Maybe you know me by now; I like the tension between what we know to be true and what we see on the canvas. The big rectangular shape—bordered by the double telephone poles, the overhead wires, the road bank and the right edge of the picture—is the most distorted of all. A tweaked frame within a frame. (Other analysts would call this an “L” composition, formed by the dark heavy lines of the phone poles and the road bank.) The little rectangles created by the wire fence are the best behaved. I spell all this out because for me, this is just all so much fun!

Is it laughable that I get such enjoyment out of contrasting ideas? But I do.

There is another mode of composition to notice here. Clearly the tree shadows on the road comprise the lower half of a radial composition, but what about the upper half? Look at the tree branches and you will soon see a lot of their shapes pointing at the sun.

I could also write about the band of saplings across the middle of the painting, and the many horizontal lines that counter them, forming a screen—another favorite of mine. Or the bands, or stripes that are piled up like a Dagwood sandwich from top to bottom. But enough is enough.

What got me started on all this? Mostly, I guess, that I am engaged at present in the creation of another essentialist painting, complete with blobs and a counterpoint of compositional devices. Please be patient with me. I just love this stuff.

Next week I participate in the plein air festival “Paint Kerrville,” Texas. May the Goddess of Creativity grant me the courage to paint Essentialistically.