When you’re in the midst of a forest, there’s an immersive quality to it. You’re completely encapsulated by the trees, leaves, the sounds, the scents. You become one with it. All the elements together are of an enormous complexity. You can’t copy this. Not with paint, or with the use of a camera. It is also not my ambition to copy. However, to completely disregard the shapes and colors of the reality you’ve found yourself in would feel disrespectful in a way. So, you have to find your voice for what you want to communicate.
In this process of the creative act you’re often made aware of the limits of your capabilities. You work to improve your skills, sure. They’ll never become perfect. That’s a blessing too, if you recognize it. Visual memory plays an important and elusive part in this whole process. For example, when you’re outdoors to paint the landscape, you go back and forth by looking at the scene in front of you and what you are painting, and in the process you apply more paint. Depending on how much you want to follow the shapes and colors in front of you, you’ll have to rely more or less on your ability to memorize what you see. Even if it is just a second. On insecure days, you might even doubt whether you are able to do even that. On days when you are in a flow, you let go, and let the painting come out of you. The more you do this, the more you feel at ease, and in a true conversation with nature. But, I feel there is always a tension between reality and your artistic expression. There is a rebel inside of me that often doesn’t want to follow what I see. Yet, I keep revisiting nature to observe.
What about taking it a step further, visiting a place, and painting it later in the studio? The memory has to overcome more than just a few seconds. It goes without saying that there is still no desire to copy the scene. However, just like when we go to paint plein air, the experience of a place or a moment is something we want to translate into paint. What would happen if memory is asked to act over a day, several days, or even longer? The memory of a place might be filled with holes, and it might be distorted. I am curious what will happen if I let my memory take a bigger part into the painting process. If I start to trust it. What will I learn from the process? Will the elements that matter most to me stand out more vividly? And what will it do to my imagination?
