The Importance of Places

As I have begun to focus more on landscape in my art I have become more aware of how important places are to me. I miss them in the same way that I miss people, which the current situation has made very clear. The atmosphere of a place can be as distinctive as the personality of a person, and even within a place as a whole the individual trees, hills, etc can feel very different. I think this is at least one of the reasons why I don't include figures in my landscapes, they distort the land's own personality simply by being visible. Perhaps it is also a kind of selfishness. These landscapes are mine, they came from my head and I don't want other people in them. I think mostly though that people distract from the purpose of my landscapes, as soon as you add a figure they become the focus and I feel like I might as well have painted a portrait. I want my landscapes to be like a portrait of a place, to capture the specific atmosphere of a location, whether real or imaginary.

Photo taken at the Weald and Downland Living Museum, one of my favourite places

Imaginary Hills

I haven't always wanted to be an artist, but I've always been a dreamer and perhaps that's the same thing. People say that I live in my own little world and I discovered that I could bring that world into my art. This world of mine isn't rigid or particular, I couldn't draw you a map of it or tell you what anything is called. However there is within my daydreams, as far back as I can remember, one reoccurring theme. A longing to see what lies over the horizon, just over the next hill. I started introducing imaginary landscapes into my work last semester, and after receiving positive feedback (and queries as to my planet of origin) I decided to continue with the idea this semester. Unfortunately I appear to have a problem. There are so many places I want to paint and ways I want to paint them that I'm struggling to decide what to focus on for this project. I keep producing work but it doesn't go together. A lot of my time has been spent on other projects lately but now I must give myself space to dream, to explore what it is about these landscapes that means so much to me and how I can show that through paint.