When I start a painting I spend a little time thinking about the layout and composition that I want to create. I don’t get too left brain about what I am doing. Often my imagination takes over. However, composition is one of those important painting ideas that I like to investigate.

For, example when I do a landscape of hills, open space or vistas, I frequently use a horizontal composition. The horizontal direction is associated with serenity and peacefulness in nature. I like the idea of creating or capturing peacefulness.

Grassland, acrylic on canvas, 14 x 14 x 1.5 inches, 2015. ©Ann Hart Marquis

Occasionally I like to read about different definitions and examples of making art. Jean Vincent has a very interesting blog in which she defines many artistic concepts. Here is some of what she suggests about a horizontal composition.

“In nature most if not all things will eventually become horizontal in one way or another or a combination of ways. They may, for example, fall over or be knocked down, or blown apart, or squashed by something heavy from above, or attacked and eaten away chemically and/or washed away by water, and eventually become horizontal or disappear altogether. The damage done to formerly vertical things does not in itself make them become horizontal. It’s gravity that does that, pulling down the parts that become loosened.”

Not all of my landscapes are horizontal in orientation, but I do like the feeling of painting shapes across the canvas rather than always coming from a vertical perspective. Here is one that is primarily vertical.

Coming from the Deep II, acrylic on canvas, 16 x 20 x 1.5 inches, 2012. ©Ann Hart Marquis

Do you have a preference?