Sandy edge, 18 inch x 18 inch, oil on birchwood panel
Vertical seems to be an ephemeral property. A sandy edge molded by ice and waves will soon crumble. The jaggedness of the Great Teton Mountains will be replaced by rounded shapes demonstrated by the juxtaposed older Gros Ventre Mountains.
In much of the cosmos, there is a wealth of curved lines – the planets with their elliptical motion, our double Helix and the curvatures of our spine.
Why then is verticality inspirational with gothic and current architecture reaching into the sky?
This is a bit pop culture, but curves seem to me to be soothing, calming, easy swings. They move but slowly. They seem to have a lot in common with the high Renaissance, the beautiful centered madonnas of Rubens and the kindly lit interiors of Vermeer.
Whereas verticals are spiky, exciting, rather pushy. The mannerists of Europe, Tintoretto, El Greco, Pontormo, and Parmigianino, as well as 1930’s American T.H. Benton go for the vertical. Their paintings are more exciting and mysterious than soothing and beautiful. Link to Mannerists below — and of course, you know of my interest in Benton and his spriraling verticals:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mannerism
http://www.juneunderwood.com/weblog/2011/07/16/benton-pollock-and-um-underwood/
June,
I thought about vertical and curved lines after having read your Benton, Pollock, and, um, Underwood and my post is sort of a response to it.
While I agree that round shapes can be soothing such as the yellow, middle part in the dune painting, I will try to demonstrate that round lines can be exciting and powerful in the painting that I am just about to start.
A challenge!
The last few weeks, I looked at other artist’s landscape paintings – Canadian Group of Seven, David Hockney, April Gornik – and I was wondering, why bother doing more landscape art. It has been done before and is still being done by others with great success.
A few years ago, I had started painting doing imaginary stuff such as Yellow Chakra but then switched to landscape art, ostensibly to focus on learning technique. Now, after a hiatus of about half a year during which I practised figure drawing, I am assembling oil colors at my secondary residence to be able to paint full time. Continue doing seascapes? Putting people into landscape paintings as Peter Doig does? Yesterday, in the freezing cold, I photographed a beach scene with marvelous lighting – which, happily now inspires me to continue with my ‘dune and water’ painting.
The beach painting above is now shown at the Dennos museum in Traverse City, Michigan, as part of a juried exhibition of ‘Northwest Michigan Regional Art’. Thus, there is some outside encouragement for me to continue.
Firstly I’d just like to say that this is a very interesting blog in general & I have found many things that interest me in what I have briefly looked at.
You have got me thinking about verticality within natural landcape. I think perhaps cliffs are not as ephemeral as all that because although they constantly recede their verticality is also replaced more or less.
Trees too are pretty vertical, although obviously not to the same extent as human built structures.
As for Gothic verticality I guess that must be to do with religious belief – reaching to the heavens & so on. These days the vertical nature of architecture might be more of a combination of prooving technical superiority along with a practical use of limited space.
Perhaps some people feel a sense of protection in being surrounded by tall buidings? I wonder to what extent this biological & to what extent cultural ? I end up feeling a bit hemmed in in that situation though – so I’d go more for cultural.
Then there are different landscapes which feel more vertical overall – I think that is partly why I often choose a vertical format for painting mountain landscapes.
I like the way you juxtapose the curve with the straighter lines of the waves in this painting.
Sonya,
Re vertical versus horizontal: A reviewer of Richard Diebenkorn’s Ocean Park Series at OCMA wrote:
I like your work of the Basque country very much – the clarity with which you depict landscape and seascape. I love your dancing trees from February 2012.
My region is the Sleeping Bear Dunes in Northern Michigan. However, this winter, I am practicing life drawing of the human figure in New York City. Dunes and humans share curvatures in common.