Fear and Consolation in Landscape Painting

Have you ever contemplated a view and wondered what is actually going on underneath it all?  Or been suddenly struck by the sheer fragility of our environment?

This happened to me after revisiting my childhood home after many years, prompting my environmental concerns to come to the fore.  I grew up on a riverbank in the Fens. On returning I saw that the river was still as beautiful as I remembered; the skies still big and the soil black; but I also saw how industrialised the farming had become and how nature and wildlife have been pushed to the margins.  This coincided with me starting the mentoring course at Newlyn School of Art.  I decided to try to make landscape work with a message about my concerns for the environment.

The art critic and historian Simon Schama expressed the idea that the act of landscape painting was a consolation, making us yearn for an arcadian world.  Some artists believe that highlighting the beauty and mythology of landscape will encourage people to appreciate it and look after it.  Although this was something I wanted to do too, I wanted to go even further and hint at the dangers from advancing urbanisation and climate change.

How to do this without overkill, seeming preachy or too doom-laden?  This was a difficult challenge.  One of the key painters I looked at was Arnold Bocklin (1827-1901).  He was one of the first artists to show how landscape could be manipulated to have an effect, speaking to the anxieties of the day.  His prolific printed versions of the ‘Isle of the Dead’ were eagerly snapped up.  Even Freud had a version in his office.  I also looked at the solemn works by Franz von Stuck, Munch, Hugo Simberg and others, mainly Scandinavian artists.  I studied their subdued use of colour, darkness, stillness and veiling but evolved my own way of working with bright colours, reflecting, I feel, a more contemporary world.  Throughout my time on the Newlyn School of Art Mentoring Programme, during a trip to Norway and working up ideas from observation, I developed an approach that is consolidated in this series.  Eventually, using sketches from Norway and the brighter palette I had explored, my first large painting ‘Thaw’ emerged.  This is the signature piece for the series.

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