Wednesday Wanderings: Creating Motion

I am enjoying these Wednesday Wanderings. They give me a chance not only to share my latest work with you, but also to reflect on my technique, how and why I do things, and how to do it better.

One of the challenges of working in a 2D medium is interpreting the 3D world. Especially in today's culture of media immersion, we know the importance of engaging a viewer. Great art has always given viewers that sense of immersion, that feeling of being there.

But you don't have to paint hyper-realistically or photo-realistically to do that. You can create the sense of reality by using other techniques.

In both of today's paintings, I worked to capture the motion of the world. With "Desert Fire":

Desert Fire
8" x 10"
Oil on Board

that motion in the real world was created by the wind in the Brigham Tea bush I was painting. I tried to suggest that motion with the directional brush stokes of the reeds contrasted with the blocky rocks and the simplification of the background.  In "Canyon Watchman":

Canyon Watchman
16" x 12"
Oil on Board

the motion is in the rocks: the viewer's eye is meant to move across them and delight in their intricacy and subtle color variations. The clefts in them lead your eye to other engaging elements in the painting, and the lone tree becomes both subject itself and background for the rocks.

The natural world is dynamic: moving and changing as the sun moves or the wind blows or the clouds shape and reshape themselves. In my landscape paintings I try to suggest that same movement and energy.