The Landscape of Painting

Shmooshy versus in focus

One of the challenges that I continually face as a painter of landscapes is figuring out how to be loose in a controlled way, but also to develop a point of interest in the painting that is in focus. I’ve been working hard on this challenge this summer.

Farmhouse | Stephen Springer Davis | 2009

I’ve long admired Richard Schmid, a prodigious artist who has been painting for more than 50 years. Check out the painting of the Sugar Maple that’s featured on his home page. Mr. Schmid has mastered the technique of shmooshing (that’s a technical term) paint around on the canvas in such a way as to make it look like trees or grass or water. But then amidst all this unfocused territory he’ll plop a beautifully rendered barn that looks like a photograph if you squint. But mysteriously, the parts that seem really tight are mostly painted the same way, except that he creates very crisp edges, which is the secret of creating the focus of attention.

I’ve been painting in oils for about 5 years, so it’s not surprising that I should feel that I have a way to go before I feel truly confident in the way I manipulate paint. This painting is my latest effort to channel Mr. Schmid and other painters I admire. You can see that I’ve painted the fields in a shmooshy way, implying grass or whatever. The trees and mountains are pretty shmooshy too. But for the buildings, though, I made the edges sharp and the roofs high-key so that they stand out and fulfill their place as the focus (pun intended) of attention. Mr. Schmid does his edges with a palette knife, and I’ve tried that in the past, but I haven’t been happy with the results. Here I painted the crisp roofs with a small brush loaded with wet paint. I’m pleased enough with the result to show it to you. This painting also represents the first time I’ve added animals to a painting. I tried even to make the cows loose.

Tags: landscape painting, oil painting

This entry was posted on Friday, August 7th, 2009 at 8:40 am and is filed under Current work, Influential artists. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.