River Glow 5x5
Hello and welcome to Tonalist painting with M Francis McCarthy.
Today's painting is 'River Glow' 5x5.
Our video features the progression of this painting from its early underpainting stages on up through the final finishing brushwork. Also featured is my usual rambling narration, so please check it out.
While painting I listen to several different podcasts. I find it helpful to have some talk going on in the background while I paint and since two different parts of my brain are being engaged, I'm able to learn things and/or be amused at the same time I am doing my painting.
Recently, on the Gavin McInnis podcast he had mentioned that "there was nothing new in stand-up comedy much like there was nothing new in landscape painting." I found this to be a remarkable coincidence since I was in the process of creating a landscape painting while listening to his podcast, and his podcast usually has nothing at all to do with landscape painting.
He brings up a good point though. Is there anything new in landscape painting? While I can honestly say that I've never seen anyone paint quite the way I do, I don't consider what I do to be new in any way, shape or form. For the most part, I would say there is no way to do anything "new" with painting of any type, whether it be portrait, landscape or abstract it's all been done already.
I guess to some people this would mean that painting and landscape painting specifically were artistic dead ends. This idea points to a larger philosophical question pertaining to something having a new quality being valuable in and of itself. Certainly, newness is a real commodity in the modern era. In my view, newness must ultimately be abandoned in favor of other criteria that is of greater significance to the fine artist.
When newness is the pursuit of any media, the art produced can often be a combination of outlandish and trite and also not terribly "new" if you wipe off some of the surface trappings to peer underneath to the foundations of how the art was constructed. This would apply to music, architecture and painting not to mention stand-up comedy.
For my part, I never have set out to do anything new. I have tried my best to express how I feel with paint, and landscape painting for me is the best way to do this. When I first started painting, I was essentially just duplicating my photographic reference in paint with a brush. As time progressed and I gained skill, I became increasingly aware of the problems with this limited way of working and thinking. I also became more and more interested in the Tonalist painters that came more than a hundred years ago.
I became interested in these older painters because their work struck an emotive chord with me and I felt a kindred relationship with them. From that point forward, I set out to express myself using the same Tonalist language as Tonalist painters from the 1800s.
In its pursuit of the new, art history has for the most part, left a lot of these Tonalist guys somewhere in a dark cupboard. The reasons for this are many and perhaps a good topic for another blog post. Suffice to say I resonated with the Tonalist style of painting and decided to learn how to use that same language to express myself in the modern era.
I do not consider my paintings to be traditional, though I understand they will be labeled so. I'm not bothered by that. Especially because all of us as people are labeled all the time in ways that are reflective of just a small part of who and what we are. How something is labeled is not as important as what it is.
M Francis McCarthy
Landscapepainter.co.nz
A bit about 'River Glow' 5x5; I'm very happy with this little study. There's a bit of grain coming through that I am generally not too keen about but it works here okay.
This is one of the occasions where a study really helped to inform and inspire the larger version of this motif. I'll talk more about this next week when we go over the large version of 'River Glow.'
To see more of my work, visit my site here.
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| 'River Glow' by M Francis McCarthy, 5x5 Oil Painting on Wood Panel |
Today's painting is 'River Glow' 5x5.
Our video features the progression of this painting from its early underpainting stages on up through the final finishing brushwork. Also featured is my usual rambling narration, so please check it out.
While painting I listen to several different podcasts. I find it helpful to have some talk going on in the background while I paint and since two different parts of my brain are being engaged, I'm able to learn things and/or be amused at the same time I am doing my painting.
Recently, on the Gavin McInnis podcast he had mentioned that "there was nothing new in stand-up comedy much like there was nothing new in landscape painting." I found this to be a remarkable coincidence since I was in the process of creating a landscape painting while listening to his podcast, and his podcast usually has nothing at all to do with landscape painting.
He brings up a good point though. Is there anything new in landscape painting? While I can honestly say that I've never seen anyone paint quite the way I do, I don't consider what I do to be new in any way, shape or form. For the most part, I would say there is no way to do anything "new" with painting of any type, whether it be portrait, landscape or abstract it's all been done already.
I guess to some people this would mean that painting and landscape painting specifically were artistic dead ends. This idea points to a larger philosophical question pertaining to something having a new quality being valuable in and of itself. Certainly, newness is a real commodity in the modern era. In my view, newness must ultimately be abandoned in favor of other criteria that is of greater significance to the fine artist.
When newness is the pursuit of any media, the art produced can often be a combination of outlandish and trite and also not terribly "new" if you wipe off some of the surface trappings to peer underneath to the foundations of how the art was constructed. This would apply to music, architecture and painting not to mention stand-up comedy.
For my part, I never have set out to do anything new. I have tried my best to express how I feel with paint, and landscape painting for me is the best way to do this. When I first started painting, I was essentially just duplicating my photographic reference in paint with a brush. As time progressed and I gained skill, I became increasingly aware of the problems with this limited way of working and thinking. I also became more and more interested in the Tonalist painters that came more than a hundred years ago.
I became interested in these older painters because their work struck an emotive chord with me and I felt a kindred relationship with them. From that point forward, I set out to express myself using the same Tonalist language as Tonalist painters from the 1800s.
In its pursuit of the new, art history has for the most part, left a lot of these Tonalist guys somewhere in a dark cupboard. The reasons for this are many and perhaps a good topic for another blog post. Suffice to say I resonated with the Tonalist style of painting and decided to learn how to use that same language to express myself in the modern era.
I do not consider my paintings to be traditional, though I understand they will be labeled so. I'm not bothered by that. Especially because all of us as people are labeled all the time in ways that are reflective of just a small part of who and what we are. How something is labeled is not as important as what it is.
M Francis McCarthy
Landscapepainter.co.nz
A bit about 'River Glow' 5x5; I'm very happy with this little study. There's a bit of grain coming through that I am generally not too keen about but it works here okay.
This is one of the occasions where a study really helped to inform and inspire the larger version of this motif. I'll talk more about this next week when we go over the large version of 'River Glow.'
To see more of my work, visit my site here.
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| River Glow 5x5 (Detail) |
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| River Glow 5x5 (Detail 2) |