Being 'Unfashionable'.....
A few months ago, I was teaching in Cumbria and was lucky enough to have some time out to visit Castlegate House Gallery, in Cockermouth. One of the artists who has exhibited there recently is the painter Martin Greenland. Martin's work interests me, particularly in my role as educator in relation to Contemporary Painting, because it seems to hover successfully between the imperatives of Contemporary painting practice and the traditional concerns of the historical canon of 'Landscape Painting'. Here is a copy of Martin's 'STATEMENT', from his website - I hope his insights will be of real interest for anyone wrestling with what it might mean to be a painter of/about the landscape, in the twenty-first Century. His views certainly strike a chord with many of my own, even though our work looks very different. Enjoy! (Text reproduced without permission. Martin Greenland's website can be found at http://www.martingreenland.co.uk/ )
'There are people who think of my painting as old-fashioned, either in a fond or slightly derogatory way. I myself never think of it this way. I have always seen my work as modern as any other modern art. It is always modern to me. My invented landscapes are reconstructions of the world as I find it today. A knowledge of the history of landscape painting and its significant practitioners and my fascination with the way these painters achieved their results has influenced the way I work, naturally. I wrestle with composition and idea until the painting begins to speak back to me, to resonate in a way that says I am getting somewhere near to what I set out to do. I dislike the idea that there are do’s and don’ts in painting and composition and sometimes I set out to break these unwritten rules. However, I am fully aware that just as the ancient Greeks discovered perfect ratios, there are things which seem to become universally successful or unsuccessful which one cannot ignore and it is then that my painting becomes ‘traditional’ not because I want it to be but because it cannot work any other way. It is then that I work within this tradition; to draw the viewer in and then, if the viewer is willing to spend time looking and reading the painting (landscape is a language) revealing the twists and surprises which plant my work firmly in the ‘NOW’.
There are two driving forces behind what I do. The first is a commitment to inventing, to creating a whole image, a believable entity, entirely from 'scratch'. This pursuit brings with it personal triumphs, feelings of self-satisfaction when it goes well, when I am able to create the illusion of reality. It is also like running towards the horizon. There is no finish line; there is always more to learn or explore or discover no matter how successful I judge my work to be. I have come to realise lately that what it really is about is a test to myself and in the paintings, the results of this test reveals just how much or little I know about the way the world (in my experience) looks and works. What I have discovered and to what extent I have mastered the technical complexities of painting to reveal this knowledge is revealed in each new painting. Very often I have to be content that all this is something between me and possibly that being which might watch over me. In this world of instant images and the photograph I have to reluctantly accept that most people who look at my work will automatically assume that it is mostly 'done from photographs'. After all, most artists whose work is representational have chosen this method. It is true that not one of us can avoid being influenced by the nature of the photograph but what you see in my work is the result of thirty-plus years of shunning the use of the photograph. What you see is the result of studying from life with drawing and painting but most importantly by looking and questioning, constantly, to learn about the way things are. The second driving force is a reluctant dedication to landscape painting. It sounds very odd to say this but I clearly remember, at the time I was beginning to study fine art that the one thing I didn't want to do was to become a landscape painter. Landscape painting has often been described as 'genre' painting, a derisory term in itself and landscape painting has continued to be allotted a very lowly place as a genre. I didn't want to end up doing something unfashionable, heaven forbid. To some extent, a family trait of shunning the fashionable (my father was a champion of the underdog) drew me closer to landscape painting. It was natural for me to use this genre to talk about the world, the landscape which I was beginning to explore and my inner feelings and discoveries made as a result of this exploration. Landscape painting is necessarily parochial. It fails as an international language and therefore is shunned even more by contemporary artists and thinkers. It is hated because it is the chosen subject of the amateur, of the 'Sunday painter'. All of this simply makes me more committed to it. I love (there is a dangerous word, also hated in contemporary circles) to explore, analyse, digest the 'real' landscape, wherever, whatever it is. I equally 'love' to refashion it, to invent, re-create using this language in which I feel fluent. At the same time I am firmly committed to the structure of 'nature', of paying attention to its laws, its physics. Only occasionally and very deliberately I will break those laws and in doing so I am able to do something which I have the ability as an artist to do, to make a metaphor, a symbol, become a concrete illusion, a surprise, a piece of surrealism, another artistic trend I also once wished to avoid. I am also committed to 'nature' because even after mankind has attempted to shape and distort it, it is impressively resistant, self-generating, entirely independent and completely unaware of us as humans – it is unquestionable. Yet despite all this I am drawn to and intrigued by the mark which we as humans have made upon our land. All of what I do requires enormous amounts of memory. Some of my paintings are drawn from memories of real places. Many of my starting places are insistent, very particular yet very elusive mental images which suddenly spring to mind. These are always landscapes of some sort. I cannot summon them up; they appear whenever they like but they are seasonal and only come to me at set times of the year. Painting is pretty much a conscious activity and the difficulty I encounter is trying to set these sub-conscious images down in paint in a very self-conscious way, when all too easily the image dies. All of my paintings combine elements of things I have encountered in the best part of fifty-one years (I can remember things from the age of two), whether strongly or vaguely remembered. What can be safely said is that these landscapes and every single element within them, exists only in these paintings. I don't find it really necessary to talk about what interests me; it is actually too complex and would be too lengthy to try here. I suppose a good cross-section of what interests me is visually evident in the paintings. I am interested in everything to different extents; a small proportion of what I am particularly drawn to finds its way into my paintings. If it is there in the paintings, it is there on purpose. I am engaged in each tiny part and the whole. I have my own aims, what each work is attempting to say and each work has different aims. The individual viewer also has their own life's experiences and will interpret my aims and the evidence they find in each work in their own way. I rarely come to start any work with the structure or concept fully formed. These works can best be described as improvisations. Sometimes strong images which exist somewhere in my head at the beginning form the resulting work. More often these starting forms radically change; the painting finding its own course. This is when I can describe painting itself and watching the landscape come into being and evolving, as exploring, going into new territory. I often find the reason for the painting or its concept, as I am part or often well on the way through. Very often I begin paintings with just pure paint, pretty abstract. I put paint down in fairly spontaneous ways to give me the unexpected which is always there 'in nature' (I always use 'in nature' for that which confronts us immediately beyond our eyes). The subsequent painting layers see the painting come into focus, the section 50%-85(+)% being the most difficult, when the painting has lost its vague freshness and has not yet become 'gilded' in the almost tactile reality I strive for.' Martin Greenland, 2017
