Still finding myself drawn to the idea of painting onto the open landscape, I have been doing some painting on to “landscape” albeit not landscape landscape, not having the elements needed to carry this out full scale (yet! And hey, maybe not ever, since it some of it defies physics), I have been painting into photographs.
These are intuitive brush strokes, just as they are when I paint at large scale. When I use a small paintbrush it allows me to paint within the rotation of my wrist and the movement of my fingers. This is vastly different to working large, broom in hand, stepping back and forth over vinyl which is rolled out across the floor. The underlying concept changes too, which is not something I was aware of before. The idea of plumbing the edges of the room with the brush, tracing out the wall with my body gesture doesn’t translate as well into small scale. But the point of these excercises is to ponder what could happen if I really was painting onto a cliff or onto the surface of water or into thin air, which is an impossibility, but wonderfully brain-stretching, potential-pondering.
