Landscape Pictures - Notes #1

"Landscape Pictures" is a new type of post for this blog. The aim is to have a periodic round-up about recommended blog posts and articles about landscape art - with an emphasis on those with decent images and places you can see landscape paintings. It will also allow me to highlight blog posts by artists just because I like the painting!

LANDSCAPE ART - ANNUAL REVIEWS

Prolific plein air painter Haidee-Jo Summers artist reviewed her plein air painting year and exhibitions in four posts which include lots and lots and LOTS of plein air landscape paintings

• My 2013 year review January to March 
• My 2013 year review - April to June
• My 2013 year review - July to September
• My 2013 review - October to December

Michael Chesley Johnson (A Plein Air Painter's Blog)has a post which lacks visual interest but reflects on which of his blogs posts in 2013 have been of most interest to Plein Air Painters - see Top 10 Posts for A Plein Air Painter's Blog

Galley Hill Allotments in the snow by Haidee-Jo Summers 
Winner of The Best Picture (Landscape) 2013

In my Making A Mark Art Blog Awards - on Making A Mark

• The Best Picture (Landscape) in 2013: readers voted was  Galley Hill Allotments in the Snow by Haidee-Jo Summers | Haidee-Jo Summers artist
• The 2013 winner of The Painting Plein Air Plus Prize was M.E. (Mike) Bailey (ME Bailey Art) 

He regularly includes lots of very useful tips relating to plein air painting and painting generally - and very obviously thoroughly enjoys his plein air painting. This particular post A Plein Air Set Up For Watercolor  (posted last month) almost deserves an award all to itself! 

• The 2013 winner of The Travels with a Sketchbook Trophy was Pete Scully (Pete Scully)

He draws the routine and the mundane in the area where he lives and the places he visits and makes most places look interesting. He opens my eyes and remind me again and again about how sketching starts with learning how to see.

LANDSCAPE ART COMPETITIONS

 

The 2013 Fleurieu Art Prize claims to be the world's richest landscape painting Prize (AU$60,000) and attracts both Australian and International Artists. Do you know different?  To see the list of 2013 finalists go to the Finalist Page.

Two competitions/exhibitions for landscape photographers:

• The exhibition for the Landscape Photographer of the Year 2013 is at the National Theatre on the South Bank until 8th February
• U.S.A. Landscape Photographer of the Year If you've taken any great landscape photographs of the USA you may well be interested in a new competition. Find out more at: http://www.usalandscapephotographeroftheyear.com/. I'll be covering this in more detail in a subsequent post.

LANDSCAPE ART HISTORY

America’s Forgotten Landscape Painter: Robert S. Duncanson is a blog post by the Smithsonianmag.com site.  Robert Seldon Duncanson is a 19th century African American artist I'd never heard of before who trained in painting in Glasgow, Scotland.  You can see more of his work on Wikimedia Commons.

Robert Duncanson - Land of the Lotus Eaters

Two paintings by Claude Monet of the cliffs at Etretat

One of the enduring motifs of landscape painting on the coast of Normandy are the famous chalk cliffs and stacks of Étretat. Charley Parker (Lines and Colors) has done a very interesting post which displays paintings by various different Painters of the cliffs of Étretat

The Standard Examiner has a fascinating piece - sadly with no images - about Top of Utah Voices: Landscape painting in the round.  However the word pictures are stunning!

Painters who utilized the art form and travelled with their depictions faced a daunting task of transporting these large works of sometimes dozens of paintings attached to each other and unrolled scene by scene. Some were advertised as being three miles long and taking over an hour to view. Usually 12 feet in height and rolled up on poles which, when unrolled by an assistant, gave the viewers a tour of the chosen scenes the painter portrayed while the artist (standing on a platform) described them.

LANDSCAPE PAINTING - EXHIBITIONS

Art In Liverpool's post 'Turner: Travels, Light and Landscape’ at the Lady Lever highlights an exhibition which runs from 14 February to 1 June 2014 at the Lady Lever Art Gallery in Port Sunlight Village, Lower Rd, Wirral CH62 5EQ.  Turner: Travels, Light and Landscape comprises some 30 watercolours, paintings and prints, drawn from the National Museums Liverpool’s own Turner collection.

Paintings such as 'Margate Harbour' (1837) and 'Linlithgow Palace' (about 1807), will be shown alongside prints and watercolours that are rarely displayed due to their light-sensitivity. This will include the watercolours 'Dudley' (about 1830-33), 'Off Dover' (between 1820-1827), 'Wells Cathedral' (1795-96) and 'View of the Mole' (about 1818).

New Turner exhibition at the Lady Lever Art Gallery in Port Sunlight - opens 14th February 2014

Recording Britain is a touring exhibition organised by the Victoria & Albert Museum, London. It can be seen in the Sir William Harpur Gallery at The Higgins in Bedford until March 20th 2014.

At the outbreak of the Second World War an ambitious scheme was set up to employ artists on the home front. The result was a collection of more than 1500 watercolours and drawings that make up a fascinating record of British lives and landscapes at a time of imminent change.

I've already bought the catalogue for the exhibition and it's absolutely fascinating.  I think this is one exhibition I'll definitely be going to see.  I'll be writing more about the project on this blog.

A National Art: Watercolour & the British Landscape Tradition can be viewed at the Wixamtree Gallery at The Higgins Bedford until Sunday 27th April 2014

The exhibition, drawn entirely from the Cecil Higgins Art Gallery collection of works on paper, explores the landscapes of the late 18th century and early 19th century watercolourists and how they influenced their 20th century counterparts. The work of Cotman, Girtin and Turner will be shown alongside that of Nash, Ravilious and Piper in a celebration of the British landscape and its ideal medium, watercolour. It is part of a season of exhibitions exploring the idea of landscape, which includes Recording Britain and Bawden's Britain.

This one takes some beating when it comes to exhibitions of landscape art. Culture 24 introduces The best art exhibitions to see in Wales in 2014 and starts with a new exhibition in Cardiff thus 

How about this for a new take on landscape painting? National Museum Cardiff’s Wales: A Visitation. Poetry, Romanticism and Myth in Art, (February 22 - September 7) takes the neo-Romantic work of David Jones, Graham Sutherland, Richard Long and contemporary abstract landscape painter Clare Woods and wraps it around an LSD-infused trip to Wales made by beat poet Allen Ginsberg in 1967.

PLEIN AIR PAINTING

Katherine van Schoonhoven (Art and Music) has an interesting review post of a trip to the coast of California when she painted the same place at different times of the day. The timescale panorama in learning from the plein air line up
is fascinating.

"View of Pescadero" Mexico, plein air, landscape painting by Robin Weiss on the In Plein Air blog is a great visual report of a landscape painting

A Vermont Pond - Autumn Landscapes #10

The Pond on Rice Farm Road

The look of Autumn varies depending on place, the type of trees which grow there and how much rain or sun that place has had.  This pastel painting of The Pond on Rice Farm Road demonstrates that some places are still green rather than red/orange/yellow/brown.

This is what Roderica Tilley (Rodrica Tilley's Pastel Paintings) had to say about her work

It was an exquisite fall day in my neighborhood two weeks ago...and the days here have been mostly soggy for months. I spent the afternoon painting this Vermont scene amidst the birds (?) rustling in the cattails next to me and quite a few leaf peepers driving by on the dirt road.

That was two weeks ago and Black Mountain, where I live, has turned into winter rather suddenly. This is another of the Transitions series. 12 x 16 pastels.

Rodrica has recently moved from Montrose, PA where she lived for 35 years to a new home and studio in Brattleboro VT.  Her series Transitions are are seasonal landscape paintings of PA and VT and the long stretch of I-88 in NY that connects her old and new home.

You can see some of Rodrica's recent work in a group show called Fractured which opened last Friday at The Butternut Gallery and Second Story Books in Montrose, PA.  The exhibition continues until December 24.

Rodrica also has an interesting project in which she is trying to produce landscapes of all 50 states of the USA Fifty State Plein Air Painting Project.  As you can imagine with a project like this postings are periodic - I'm adding it into this blog's blogroll.

Seasonal Landscapes

This is the last in the series of autumn landscapes by art bloggers - which I have greatly enjoyed doing.  Apologies to those work was not listed.

However on Thursday watch out for the post in which I declare the new three month season of winter landscapes open!

October Marsh - Autumn Landscapes #6

Autumn Marsh by Randall David Tipton
oil on canvas, 24" x 24"

This is one of many paintings which Randall David Tipton (Painter's Process) has done of the Minto Brown Island Park and nature preserve.  This lies in the valley of the River Willamette, west of Salem in Oregon.  (see also the park on Wikiamapia)

The painting was originally posted in October Marsh on his blog.  Randall says of the park

it's a wildlife preserve, with some agriculture as well. It`s wetlands are the most colorful I`ve ever seen and they peak in November.

and

Though in the post I mention just the aesthetic challenge, in others I talk more about its wealth of color in Autumn. The park is unique in that it`s a multiple use property. It has a huge wonderful dog park, playgrounds, picnic areas, acreage is set aside for agriculture and the preserve is dense with sloughs and lagoons for water birds. It is particularly haunting in late fall when it is often foggy with just remnants of bright foliage left on the trees.

You can see more of his landscape paintings - which have a strong focus on water and trees - on his website - Randall David Tipton.  Whether he's painting in oil or watercolour he is a master of his medium and a master of colour - I suggest you have a good look at them.  I really like them and am most impressed with his portfolio.

Randall says of himself

The landscape has been my primary interest from an early age. I am mostly self taught and have been deeply influenced by the American abstract expressionists, particularly by their belief in improvisation as path to something unique and meaningful. I was fortunate to study with Richard Diebenkorn in the first master class at the new Santa Fe Institute of Fine Art.

Walking is an important part of my life and work. When I'm in the landscape, I often have a camera, notebook or sketchbook to help me remember my response. What I see and experience outdoors is the basis for most of my painting.

How to get your paintings of Autumn posted on this blog

This is the sixth in my series of Autumn Landscapes by art bloggers. If you're interested in having your images displayed as part of the seasonal changes

• drop me a line (see side column for email), 
• reference the blog post in which I can see the painting 
• and (this is important) use Readers Autumn Landscapes in the subject line of your email (This is so I can find it in the masses I get each day!)

Places to Paint: Please note that I'm also interested in the place as well as what led you to paint it in Autumn.

I can't promise to display all that I'm told about. Plus there is an absolute rule which is that this is for art bloggers only ie "no blog post, no feature on my blog".

Jackson, New Hampshire - Blogger's Autumn Landscapes #5

Autumn near Jackson, New Hampshire (2006) by Stapleton Kearns
24 by 30 inches

I often read Stapleton Kearns's blog.  He's a professional landscape painter and he has a lot of very sensible things to say.  His blog is always an interesting read.

I spotted this Autumn Landscape on his blog and asked him if I could post it on this blog - and he kindly agreed.

Turning to Winter for a moment, Stapleton is running a first Snowcamp at Sugar Hill in New Hampshire is already full.  He's running two more weekends (28-30 January / 4-6 February) in 2012 - for those who want to have a workshop about painting snow.  It's "set in an old wooden inn on a high ridgetop in the White Mountains of New Hampshire, the views from the property are unbelievable". I hope we get to see what he paints at Snowcamp!

How to get your paintings of Autumn posted on this blog

This is the fifth in my series of Autumn Landscapes by art bloggers.  If you're interested in having your images displayed as part of the seasonal changes

• drop me a line (see side column for email), 
• reference the blog post in which I can see the painting 
• and (this is important) use Readers Autumn Landscapes in the subject line of your email (This is so I can find it in the masses I get each day!)

Places to Paint: Please note that I'm also interested in the place as well as what led you to paint it in Autumn.

I can't promise to display all that I'm told about. Plus there is an absolute rule which is that this is for art bloggers only ie "no blog post, no feature on my blog".