Landscape 911

The Fourth Meeting of The Dead Paintings Society, 1 June 2012

The last session before the Vermont Workshop was spent with a large-ish painting, 22 x 28", which had been declared DOA by its creator.

Discussing the painting, I was perplexed by the bridge (here faintly seen along the horizon). Mis-reading the scale of the scene, I took the bridge to be a quite large structure, seen from a considerable distance. In fact, I was told, it is a much smaller bridge, and not so far away. What I had supposed were treed banks on either side of the bridge are, actually, just an embankment.

I was also a bit troubled by the high hill on the right, and by the trees? bushes? growing thereon. The fact that I didn't know if they were small trees or large bushes was another issue. The water seemed to be going uphill, not just receding from the viewer.

I was reminded of a painting of mine, probably from the late '90s. In mine there was a hill on the right, and water running away, too. I thought I remembered that the brook stayed flat as it receded. So I looked for an image, and came up with one.


For some reason, the recession stays flatter---to my eye.


Anyway, I set to work. I removed the cold, cold blue from the sky, and lowered the hill. Then, not satisfied with the horizon line, I lowered that too. Now I was really in for it, and I changed the palette to a more silvery, greenish color scheme. Thoughts of Holland popped up, and I made a small structure straddling the waterway.
What is it?

Who knows? For me it's just a design element.

I worked out some verticals by planting some trees, and built a house for the Scandanavian (Mr. Johanssen) on the right. Johanssen seems to prefer white houses, and he's always building away in my paintings.
Then the problem arose: whether I wanted the viewer to have easy access to the site, or whether I wished to keep the viewer at a distance. I opted for admittance, and made a purpose-built ricketty bridge.

By now, of course, I was far, far fr0m the original scene. But the new painting seemed pretty cohesive, and it seemed to be happening all on the same day. I darkened some cloud masses, to hint at a possibly occluded sun, and thereby gained some interest for the now larger sky.


Because I'm behind on posting, due to last week's workshop, when we met again today I was able to get the reaction of the original artist. I'm happy to report that the new version passed muster.


Oh---about that pollarded willow, near the center of the painting. Last year Johanssen was a bit over-zealous about cutting it back, and this year it hasn't leafed out. I'll let you know if it recovers, and sprouts again.