vendredi 1 mai 2015

Looking as if for the last time.


garden. oil on canvas. 


afternoon garden with easel.
oil on canvas. 30x30cm.


grey afternoon with easel.
oil on canvas. 30x30cm.

We often speak of looking as if for the first time, that shock of the new and the approach that it can engender but the opposite is also true and equally valid. So is looking away and trying to remember the salient experience of that looking. What is sharp to the minds eye, what had precedence, what was there and where was it and when looking back where is it now? So that is another thing that is interesting to me, that and the way that small area of sharpness shifts each time the eye returns to the space observed.

2 commentaires:

  1. I just posted on my blog some recent scientific observations on the enigma of color. It seems to scientists ( but not to me) that the camera does not come close to seeing as the eye does when it come to color or anything else. If fact shadows are not darker spots but color. Monet figured that one out.

    So I thought I'd pop over here and see how light and the seasons affect work done by direct observation over time.

    This brings to mind a workshop I gave. I had a beautiful living breathing model standing on the stage; one of my students was painting her while looking through the viewfinder of his camera. He said he could not compose or paint without it.

    Once while walking to my class- I noticed a class next to mine- with twice as many students. They were lined up on both sides of a long table with small photographs of landscapes propped up in front of them to copy- while the instructor showed them how to paint them. Outside the windows glorious views of the beautiful Arizona landcape went sadly unobserved.

    By the by- I love the red of the easel frame against the landscape. Lovely.

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  2. Sharon, I sent you a reply, well kind of,by way of a new post. Going to read your blog now.

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