Day Ninety Three: November Landscape by Charles Warren Eaton
Hello and welcome to day 93 of 100 days of Tonalism.
Today study is 'November Landscape' by Charles Warren Eaton.
We've done a lot of studies after Eaton in this series. Today study is very representative of his later period, when he was doing a lot of white pines, often silhouetted against sunset or twilight skies. I will be reading some information about Charles Warren Eaton from the book Intimate Landscapes: Charles Warren Eaton by David a Cleveland (which I have just received in the mail), on today's video narration so please check that out.
Today, I'd like to talk about capturing feeling in art. In yesterday's video narration I was speaking about how there are so many feelings that we have, that words cannot describe easily. When you actually think about it, we have a very limited palette with which to render our feelings. We have words like happy, sad, angry or depressed. These words capture only the most extroverted and dense feelings.
For expressing the subtler feelings we have poetry and we have painting. Both of these arts are difficult to master. It is all too easy to make bad paintings and to write bad poetry. For these mediums to appropriately convey the more subtle feelings, the artist or poet must work at their craft for a good while and even then there is no guarantee that they will be able to express anything that actually moves other people.
I was attracted to Tonalism because of the visceral emotive power of this mode of expression. It has taken me many years to get to a point where I feel that I'm doing work that is accurately conveying emotion. When people ask me why I do landscapes and not portraiture or still life, the reason that I give them is that I feel that landscape has the greatest ability to impart emotion, better than any other subject matter. The reason for this is that the landscape is essentially neutral, we all come to it as individuals.
If I were to make a painting of an emotional person it would not have the same ability to move someone especially in the subtle ways that a landscape painting can. If you've ever been outside during a sunset or twilight, you know that special magical feeling that we can all experience. This is a time of enchanting, luminescent light.
Using art to convey emotion is one of the highest accomplishments that any artists can achieve. And by emotion I mean the most profound and ephemeral feelings we have. It's no secret that art can be used to portray the coarser emotions as well, but I see no point in that other than the pursuit of some sort of cleverness.
Cheers,
M Francis McCarthy
Landscapepainter.co.nz
A bit about 'November Landscape' by Charles Warren Eaton; I enjoyed doing this study although I felt a bit constrained by the very small size of the panel and, also by the fact that my reference image is a bit blown out.
Like most of Eaton's paintings of white pines so much of the painting's success relies on the contours of the trees against the brighter sky.
To see more of my work, visit my site here
 |
| Painted after - November Landscape by Charles Warren Eaton, Study by M Francis McCarthy - Size 5x5, Oil on wood panel |
We've done a lot of studies after Eaton in this series. Today study is very representative of his later period, when he was doing a lot of white pines, often silhouetted against sunset or twilight skies. I will be reading some information about Charles Warren Eaton from the book Intimate Landscapes: Charles Warren Eaton by David a Cleveland (which I have just received in the mail), on today's video narration so please check that out.
Today, I'd like to talk about capturing feeling in art. In yesterday's video narration I was speaking about how there are so many feelings that we have, that words cannot describe easily. When you actually think about it, we have a very limited palette with which to render our feelings. We have words like happy, sad, angry or depressed. These words capture only the most extroverted and dense feelings.
For expressing the subtler feelings we have poetry and we have painting. Both of these arts are difficult to master. It is all too easy to make bad paintings and to write bad poetry. For these mediums to appropriately convey the more subtle feelings, the artist or poet must work at their craft for a good while and even then there is no guarantee that they will be able to express anything that actually moves other people.
I was attracted to Tonalism because of the visceral emotive power of this mode of expression. It has taken me many years to get to a point where I feel that I'm doing work that is accurately conveying emotion. When people ask me why I do landscapes and not portraiture or still life, the reason that I give them is that I feel that landscape has the greatest ability to impart emotion, better than any other subject matter. The reason for this is that the landscape is essentially neutral, we all come to it as individuals.
If I were to make a painting of an emotional person it would not have the same ability to move someone especially in the subtle ways that a landscape painting can. If you've ever been outside during a sunset or twilight, you know that special magical feeling that we can all experience. This is a time of enchanting, luminescent light.
Using art to convey emotion is one of the highest accomplishments that any artists can achieve. And by emotion I mean the most profound and ephemeral feelings we have. It's no secret that art can be used to portray the coarser emotions as well, but I see no point in that other than the pursuit of some sort of cleverness.
Cheers,
M Francis McCarthy
Landscapepainter.co.nz
A bit about 'November Landscape' by Charles Warren Eaton; I enjoyed doing this study although I felt a bit constrained by the very small size of the panel and, also by the fact that my reference image is a bit blown out.
Like most of Eaton's paintings of white pines so much of the painting's success relies on the contours of the trees against the brighter sky.
To see more of my work, visit my site here
 |
| Original painting, November Landscape by Charles Warren Eaton |