Paintings of France, Italy and Beyond

While trolling through the Slow Travel forums for my upcoming trip to France, I stumbled across this tip on a new upcoming PBS art series on landscape painting hosted by artist David Dunlop.  Here’s an excerpt from the PBS website:

“LANDSCAPES THROUGH TIME WITH DAVID DUNLOP — a lively and entertaining new 13-part PBS series shot in HD — offers viewers the opportunity to travel with noted painter and lecturer David Dunlop to magical, historic locations in the United States and France as he follows the lives and artistic paths of celebrated artists such as Turner and Monet. Dunlop journeys to the locations these artists visited and learns how they transformed their vision into a familiar painting. “

PBS always does a wonderful job with its art series, so I hope this one broadcasts in my area. It’s set to air in June, which will be just on the heels of having returned from my own France landscape painting trip. You can read all about the program  here, but you’ll probably have to just check back in at viewing schedule  as they only list schedules 13 days out.

Jennifer Young; Vibrant Landscapes
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Over the holidays I finally seized the opportunity to head up to the National Gallery in Washington D.C. for the Turner show.  This traveling exhibition is a rare opportunity to see some 140 works by a true master of landscape painting (and, I might add, great-grandfather of abstraction). The show was wonderfully comprehensive, and featured so many of his larger scaled oil paintings as well as his intimate watercolors.

It’s probably an understatement to say that Turner seemed an interesting guy. His work showed a passionate interest in depicting disasters (caused both by nature and by man) in powerful compositions of dramatic color and light.  In painting after painting, one sees snow storms, shipwrecks, thunder, and fire swirling with emotion. The man must have been exhausted! I am not overly fond of the strong narrative element in many of his paintings, but even so, there is much to see and appreciate in these works. Turner was an artist concerned with social and political injustices both past and present and used narrative elements (both visually and in some of his ridiculously long painting titles) to make his points. He had some statements to make, that’s for sure.

Turner started out as an architectural draftsman, and mastered drawing at an early age. This was quite evident in his beautiful paintings of Rome and Venice (pictured above). And while paintings of pure landscape were minimal, there were more sublime pieces as well, where the narrative was limited and light was the subject. Some of my favorites of the larger oils were labeled as “studies” or ”unfinished”. I loved the way these were so fresh and stripped down to their simplified essence of light and color. He was a precursor to the Impressionists and truly ahead of his time. As explained in NGA exhibition supporting materials, these “incomplete” works were just that, and probably not meant for exhibition, but as preparations for “finished” paintings to present to collectors and the Academy. But we can appreciate them with our modern sensibility as works of art in their own right, as well as for their wonderful documentation of this artist’s processes.

While the oils were undeniably impressive and painted with skill and bravura, I personally found greatest delight in his watercolors. These just blew me away. Works ranged from highly finished watercolors with a lot of detail  and drawing, to quick expressive sketches (near abstractions) from his sketchbooks.

If you’re anywhere near D.C., you can catch this extraordinary show at the National Gallery’s West building through January 6th, 2008 . Check out this cool online exhibition preview at the NGA’s website! Next stops for the exhibition are Dallas and New York.

Jennifer Young; Vibrant Landscapes
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From time to time I receive wonderful messages from students who have chosen my work as a focus for their school projects. Here is a recent message I received. My answer follows:

I wanted to ask if you could tell me about yourself and your paintings. I am studying A-levels and I am doing a critical study on you. Could you please let me know how you got into drawing landscapes. I would appreciate it.

Thank you so much for your interest in my artwork! As to your question:
In college and for some time thereafter I was developing a body of work that focused on the human figure. These paintings were heavily influenced by a number of sources in art history– Frida Kahlo, Gustav Klimt, and the early renaissance paintings I had seen in Italy and the Netherlands:

One of my favorites from this period
“Faith”, Oil on Canvas (sold)

So how did I go from that to landscape? Well, in college I held a double major of study in both painting and art history, so I was a lover of art of many different styles and from many different periods in history. I loved the impressionists and the post impressionists but impressionist landscape paintings were not much favored with my professors at the time. Professors at my school were much more attuned to paintings of either a nonobjective nature, or figurative paintings with deep psychological impact. So I developed the figurative paintings as my “serious body of work” and only dabbled in landscapes every now and then.
 
But eventually I found myself struggling more and more with the figure paintings. They were very large and some of them were filled with a lot of angst. One painting took weeks to complete. Emotionally they were often quite draining and my inspiration was slowing down. When my father died of pancreatic cancer all of the work I had been doing on those  paintings came to a complete halt. I began to question a lot of things, including whether I would ever do another painting. My heart just wasn’t in it.
 
My husband naturally knew of my struggles and, knowing how much I had loved the landscapes of Monet, Sisley and many other impressionist painters, he bought me my very first outdoor easel. He also signed me up for a painting class so I could learn to paint on location outdoors. I loved it from the moment I tried it. I began painting again, and I finally allowed myself to follow my bliss and paint the landscape. After the death of my father I really wanted to do things that were more life affirming, that filled me with joy. I realized life is indeed so very short and I wanted to celebrate it in a way that had meaning for ME, without worrying about whether others found it artistically “important”.
 
Painting the landscape was one of the ways I could honor that desire, and I have been painting them ever since. Nowadays I also enjoy experimenting with other kinds of painting, including abstraction, and sometimes even the human figure again. I believe that an artist has the right to explore it all, if that is her desire.  
I hope this helps you with your project!

Jennifer Young; Vibrant Landscapes
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I have begun to compile a list of Art Books that I have enjoyed or gotten a lot out of. I went to art school, but landscape painting was NOT the focus there. So after I started painting landscapes I went about furthering my own education, primarily through art books and experimentation. I also took a workshop here and there as I got more involved, but books have always been an important componenet in my art studio. Follow this link to see my art library. I only just begun, but will be adding more to this as time allows.

Tags: art painting landscape painting art books plein air 

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There has been much debate over whether artists should varnish their oil painitngs, and I think the word is still out, depending on who you ask.  A varnish is a resin applied to the surface layer of an oil painting. It adds sheen and can protect the painting from dust and pollutants. The varnish can be removed by conservators for cleaning without removing the paint layers underneath.

But varnish also has yellowing properties and can turn quite dark over time. It can also crack the paint beneath it if it is applied when the painting isn’t completely dry through and through. I have also seen paintings ruined by varnish that was applied too thickly or unevenly, so you have to be careful with it. 

In earlier times, varnish could protect from the dirt particles put out by burning coal, etc. But the Impressionists did not varnish their paintings because they wanted to avoid the yellowing properties perhaps, but mainly because they preferred a matte look to their paintings (if you go into a museum today you may see varnish on the surfaces of many of these paintings, but likely they were not put there by the painters themselves. Interestingly, Monet in particular preferred a very matte look and white, plain frames for his paintings; not the heavy ornate gold ones you see in the museums.)

Today varnish seems to be purely a optional decision, and mainly an aesthetic one. The Gamblin website has some good info on the topic of varnishing here. If an artist likes the look of a varnish, she can apply one, but only after the painting is completely dry. Oil paintings that have any thickness at all generally take about 6 months to dry through and through. If not, serious cracking can occur because the top layer of varnish will dry faster than the layers beneath.

In all honesty many of my paintings don’t hang around in my studio for 6 months. What I usually do is to apply a retouch varnish once my paintings are dry to the touch on the surface. A retouch varnish is so lightweight that it becomes part of the top paint layer, so you don’t risk the cracking that a heavier varnish can do. A retouch varnish can also even out the surface of the painting, bringing out darker areas that may have “sunken” to a more lustruous appearance. The effect is to provide a lusterous protective sheen to the painting, which I prefer to a super shiny surface.

Tags: art painting landscape painting artist

Jennifer Young; Vibrant Landscapes
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