Deep In December

December arrives here as it does in Paris and London, with tinted fog, bare trees, and horizontal light. Artists find  foggy days appealing for their obscuring ambiguity and  defused luminosity. 18^th Century Dutch landscape painters found charm in winter. Sung Dynasty landscape painters found poetry in the tangle of bare trees and mountain mists. Artists find a clear winter day winter appealing with its graphic contrasts, bold edges, poetically denuded nature. I will first look back to winter renderings by artists from end of the 19^th century. They include Whistler, Rockwell Kent and John Henry Twachtman.

Whistler’s poor eyesight welcomed the glare-free world of fog he observed in London to Venice.  Whistler subjects lay as hints and guesses on the surface of his canvas. Color has been reduced along with contrast and edge information (see example 1).  After experiencing the misty uncertainty of Whistler’s, Corot’s and George Inness’ works, American Impressionist, John Henry Twachtman infused complementary color effects into his subtle fog-obscured winter landscapes (example 2). He painted many of them near me on Horseshoe Creek in Greenwich, Connecticut. Example 3 is my foggy December riparian landscape. It too depends upon complementary color to invigorate the foggy mist.

Example 1. Whistler fog landscape, 1877

Example 2.Twachtman winter atmosphere,1907

Example 3. Stonebridge in December Fog,

You will soon notice that I begin my December landscapes with a similarly obscured indefiniteness but, I used higher contrasts. To demonstrate the graphic potential of winter’s clear light I have an example of Rockwell Kent’s Maine landscape of 1902 (example 4). Observe the design with its bright, canted threshold shape along the ground plane.  Observe the counterpointing dark coniferous area above the snowy threshold followed by another contrasting light mountain shape above that.  Kent subdivided into two areas the threshold light shape (snow).  The bottom brighter shape faintly shares the angle of the dark coniferous forest area above.  The paler triangle snow shape above forms a long triangle. This slow triangular shape is often used as the threshold shape in landscapes.  You can see it in examples 5 and 6 by Balthus. Notice how Balthus uses a similar design schema for both his paintings, one summer and one winter.  Balthus painted these 50 years after Rockwell Kent but, both artists borrowed from the same  older European traditions. Even Pieter Bruegel used this design schema. For example, Balthus reverses Bruegel’s painting of Hunters in The Snow of 1565 to paint example 6.

Example 4. Rockwell Kent

Example 5. Balthus 1.

Example 6. Balthus 2.

In example 7 I reversed the direction of the threshold triangle and extended it far up the picture plane.  Like Balthus and Kent, I borrowed the use of graphic flattened planes from Renaissance frescoes. Balthus claimed that no artist was credentialed without familiarity with the works of  Piero Della Francesco and Giotto.

Example 8 provides an example of an even more graphic image. Here too, I  reversed the designs of Kent and Balthus. This image is mixed media with a photo-image as a substrate. The photo imagery is not related to the painting but, simply serves to offer itself as a resource for texture and color after it has been  revealed through deletions with a squeegee.

Example 7. Winter hillside shadows

Example 8. Winter Hill,mixed media.

I further altered the traditional composition used by Balthus in examples 9 and 10. I too relied on warm iron-oxide tones  and, the Italian Renaissance dependency on burnt sienna. My design presents a series of diagonal reverses in the upper horizon area.  I present this example in two steps.  First (example 9) offers the initial lay-in followed by example 10, the painting in its present state. Notice that example 9 has more ambiguity and glow but less edge clarity than in example 10.

Example 9. Step one of Winter Swale.

Example 10. Step two of Winter Swale.

My last example for December fog uses the foreshortened triangle of linear perspective to bring you into deeper space.  The distant foggy ambiguity infers infinite space. Contemporary life arrives with the glare of headlights. Example 11 presents the initial lay-in. Example 12 presents the image in an intermediate stage. Example 13 presents the image in its presents form.

Example 11. Step one, the lay-in

Example 12. Step two.

Example 13. Step 3, current state