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| A duck, 8in x 10in, oil on Masonite board |
I have always enjoyed nature. The natural world, the beauty of its complex simplicity, is life at its core. Creation and creatures fascinate me. Journeying from the center of my Christian spirituality, to my artistic sensibility, I find myself always preferring nature to other stuff, other sights, other structures. Painting nature doesn't equal to representing, say, the shape of a tree and how the light of the sun produces diverse visual effects on its different planes. In the case of a tree or a duck, it is painting the strength, energy, and/or growth of a living organism, to say the least. It is a response -and kind of relationship- with what is being depicted. In painting there is no button to click. There is no screen to check how the image came out one second later. Painting is an exercise of the soul, a way of feeling and seeing, before it becomes an artistic response on the canvas.
Nature is so amazing, varied, and full of movement, light, colors, shapes and relationships that... it is just impossible to replicate it in a picture (no, photography cannot do that either).
What is left for us then? My first response is to thank God, knowing that I am alive, and that right now is a privilege to enjoy creation as a breathing creature myself. Then, is appreciation, observation of the natural world. From these, emerges the interpretation of what I perceive through my senses in an artistic way, struggling with the materials (oil, pencils, mediums, etc), the techniques available in the realist/impressionist tradition to say what I want to say, hoping that it will communicate to others the feelings and concepts that moved me initially.
Bottom line, art is an interpretation of nature, expressed through the sensitivity of the artist, that in the best of cases conveys dexterity of craftsmanship and purity of emotions. No matter how well an interpreter uses the visual language, but there is no substitute to listening directly to the Creator, creation, and the creatures. It was with this awareness of the plentiful beauty around me that I painted a duck.
