Between Artist and Place - A Space for Reflection?

Kurt Jackson - 'Pheasants Squabble Just After Sunset' (2016) mixed media on board

'An exhibition at Harvard University's Fogg Museum in 2006 examined the range and significance of artists' sketchbooks. The exhibition proposed two broad categories when attempting to classify sketches - observation and invention. According to the catalogue, "observation" relates to the artist's intention to record her/his environment through an objective recording of nature and the landscape, often supported by diverse insights and commentary on the weather, wildlife, and what's for lunch. "Invention" is when the artist endeavours to record her/his emotional response to an environment, and is therefore less concerned with the precision or accuracy of the visual record. Trial and error, experiment and exploration are evidenced in the artist's attempts to resolve the creative tension between an intense internal imagination, the viewpoint and compositional strictures.'

- Alan Livingston in 'Kurt Jackson Sketchbooks' (Publ. Lund Humphries; 2014)

The above quote suggests a broad distinction between two possible approaches to landscape work. Whilst I'm not necessarily convinced by this binary relationship, or that these two positions are mutually exclusive, they do perhaps provide a framework for quantifying and evaluating our own working methods in relation to the landscape as subject.

In the past, I have often made a distinction between artwork which is 'about', 'of', 'from', or 'with', the landscape. Though there may seem to be nuanced semantic differences between these terms in a linguistic sense, I would argue that they may make for significantly different practical approaches to the work, and its results.

It might be an interesting project to look at the work of a number of artists whose focus is the landscape, and try to categorise them according to the above list. Similarly, you could analyse and reflect on your own approach, and see if you can position yourself as an artist making work about, of, from, or with, the landscape. What do these differences mean to you?

Exercise:

Select the work of several landscape artists whose work you like and admire. Make a forensic analysis of what it is that you like about this particular work - try to pin down exactly what these qualities are - colour, form/composition, materials, marks/gestures, narrative, interpretation, abstraction, representation/observation, or some other aspect(s). Likely, it will be a combination of some or all of these - if so, in what proportion? Make notes in your studio journal with regard to your thoughts and observations; how, and in what ways, do these relate to your own work?

Make a series of works of your own, trying to incorporate some of your ideas, thoughts/reflections, and your understanding of the techniques of the artists whose work you have analysed.