On the Color of Edges in Landscape

Some of my blog posts are expressions of my own struggles, explorations, and discoveries in the plastic arts. This note, if not profitable to anybody else (although I hope it is for some fellow artists), at least pretends to be a record of my own artistic journey. 

I found that Daniel Burleigh Parkhurst, on his 1897 book "The Painter in Oil," has a chapter on landscape. In it, he covers various principles of landscape painting; includes comments on the Impressionist's approach to landscape painting, and what was more interesting than anything else for me, he speaks of EDGES. Parkhurst elaborates on the importance of color variety, saying:

"Color of contour. An important thing for you to look for and to study is the color of contours. You will not find it easy; not easy even to know what it is that you are looking for. But consider it as a combination of contiguous values and color vibrations, and things will reveal themselves to you.

No form is composed of unvarying color. No combination of color surrounding it lacks of variety. All along the edge of forms and objects, of whatever kind, the value and color relation constantly change. The outline is not constant. Here and there it becomes lost from identity of value and color with what surrounds it, and again defines itself. The edge is not sharp. The color rays vibrate across each other. The inevitable variety of tint and value, of definitiveness and vagueness, gives a never-ending play of contrasts and blending. These qualities which go to the harmonizing of color, to the expression of light, and particularly to the feeling of atmosphere. This constant variety of contrasting edges is the constant movement and play of the visual rays, and the study of it gives life and vibration to the picture, and all the objects represented in it.

Outdoors, particularly when the play of diffused light and the movement of all the objects is continually felt, either  through their own elasticity or because of the heat and light waves, this study is most necessary, if you would get the feeling of freedom, space, and air."

These considerations on edges as they applied to landscape painting make the reading of the chapter insightful, to say the least. I have been aware of edges on other painting genres, but for some reason, not that much on my landscapes! It seem that you can get away with a couple things in landscape, or so I thought before. Keeping lost most edges as a general principle, helps create the "atmosphere" in the two dimensional fictions that painters create. Giving edges/contours intentional variety (lost, found, color), is my new insight. How to apply this principle to the canvas on my coming landscapes, now this... this is the question! Perhaps a good starting point is to observe how master painters -from past and present- have managed their edges, and their color in the contour of their landscape painting.

By the way... if over time I am able to find good pictures of paintings that exemplify what Parkhurst proposes regarding edges, I will upload them here. Likewise, if any of you recognizes this principles in some pictures and kindly makes me aware of them, I will appreciate it very much. I know that photos cannot compare, nor should substitute, to the advantages of direct observation of masterpieces in museums or private collections. Lucky are those that have significant art collections around the corner of their house, or at least, in their town or State :)