It is a sunny afternoon in the pine forest, and we are lying on a blanket. A short break during a bike ride. I am looking around a bit and enjoying the sounds. The crickets, woodpeckers, and small cicadas. I am also looking at the colors I see. The trunks of the pine trees standing in the sun stand out brightly against the background. But what kind of color is it? A sort of gray with yellow? In any case, an unsaturated color, but with a much higher intensity than the shadows surrounding it. I would love to wrap one of these color up, and take it home. Trying to mix this color with paint is impossible, too. The light color on the tree bark is light from the bright afternoon sun being reflected. So it would only work if I made a painting and illuminated that small piece of the bark with bright sunlight, leaving the rest unlit.
Mixing colors with paint is not the same as what I see happening right here. In a painting, everything is lit equally bright. To achieve such effects after all, I must employ different methods of color usage. And as I sit here, I marvel at and question these kinds of things. My eyes wander further through the pine forest, and I see how long and curved the branches are. The branches are sometimes even longer at the top than at the bottom. This applies to the larches I see here, but I also see a few spruces, and with those, it is a completely different story. I drift further to the needles on the branches. How does the color of the needles in the sun relate to the needles in the shade?
I keep looking in the hope that I might be absorbing that visual information. And I probably am absorbing something. But what you absorb is always a derivative of the actual experience. I also keep looking because it is irresistible. Everything is perfect, yet also completely unique. And every time you stand in a different spot, it all fits together again.
In the first steps of creating a painting, you think about the composition, or where the different elements are positioned within the plane. And this applies just as much to photography or other forms of visual art. But when you are in nature, you can shift your position slightly each time. Yet the composition is always right. The word “composition” doesn’t even have meaning in a forest, or anywhere else in nature. I enjoy it time and again, and it makes me curious every time. Knowing also, that I will never really find conclusive answers…
