Appreciating life and landscape during COVID
After being in lock-down and supposedly having had all the time in the world to find new inspiration, -portraits, animals, experimenting with other methods, -I have tried and enjoyed immensely but ultimately come full circle. I still can’t keep away from painting and drawing landscape as my primary passion.
If anything is more alluring during this period, it’s being taken to somewhere new to explore, somewhere open, immersing, dramatic, inspiring. Transported not just physically, but emotionally, as some kind of respite from the mundane.
At least on the daily exercise walks and shopping trips out of the valley, it has been possible to gather some inspiration. -Wishing there were more exciting prospects is a concept I cannot complain too much about as I live in a pretty amazing place, but I must admit it has been what I always see and so stimulation through the norm is usually fairly low.
The challenge I set myself in my art is to try and look a little closer, in order to see what others do not. The little things that can turn an everyday sighting into something truly fascinating or beautiful and looking even more intensely as to why and what makes it stand out, -and it’s not always in the physically small detail. That’s the power of illustration and true appreciation.
The highlight of the nature and the subject of landscape over this period has definitely been the shift in seasons. The changes that spring up are exciting and presence of new life is thrilling. Spring blossoms on the trees, greener and more flora sprayed pastures, fresh smells and animals grazing outside again, and bees buzzing and bustling everywhere.
My new charge is not just to celebrate our surroundings and glorify their magnificence, but to try and make each piece of work a portal for escapism. An emotional experience that inspires much more love for my landscape subjects than the viewer had before. It’s a passionate and big ambition but we’ll see how it goes.
