Tag Archives: landscape painting

Horizontal Composition

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.

Ann Hart Marquis-Grassland-horizontal composition

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.

Ann Hart Marquis-Coming from the Deep II-vertical compositon

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

Do you have a preference?

Working With a Horizon Line

Winter is almost over and here in New Mexico, trees and plants are starting to pop with color. Instead of browns and greys in the landscape I am starting to see a few patches of green, orange and even yellow all over the scenery.

Here is another painting that I just completed using a rather limited palette of raw sienna, cobalt blue and red oxide. This combination allowed me to mix interesting pinks, greens and oranges. Once again I have painted a high horizon line. I am still somewhat preoccupied with the horizon line.

New Mexico Winter #5, acrylic on paper,10 x 3 inches. Ann Hart Marquis

Horizon Line

The horizon line is thought to be one of the foremost visual components or clues of perspective in a landscape. It’s the thing we immediately use to interpret the perspective in a painting we are viewing. We do it almost instinctively.

So if the horizon line is too high or low in a painting we lose the brain’s ability to interpret and perceive perspective. Instead, the viewer has to first struggle to deal with where the horizon line is, to see it for what it is and put it in relation with everything else in the composition.

Too high a horizon line, with only a tiny sliver above it and the brain won’t instantly register that area as sky. If it is too low, the sliver below the horizon risks not being perceived as land.

In most cases, a low horizon line works for emphasis on the sky. A high horizon line emphasizes the landscape.

In any case, I hope to be able to abstract the horizon line more in the future.

Abstraction of the Landscape

In my current series I am painting the colors, shapes and light of New Mexico. In a sense, I am not interested in actual landscape that I see. I am interested in distilling the vistas into their purest essence. When I paint, I strive for an abstraction of the landscape.

As Georgia O’Keeffe put it, “Objective painting is not good painting unless it is good in an abstract sense. A hill or tree cannot make a good painting just because it is a hill or a tree. It is the lines and colors put together so they say something. For me that is the very essence of painting. The abstraction is often the most definite form for the intangible thing in myself that I can only clarify in paint.”

Ann Hart Marquis-New Mexico II- abstraction

When I look around me I see the unadorned brown shapes of the extinct volcanoes in the western horizon. I see the greys and blacks that the lava flow left behind. There are also the restrained reds and oranges of the adobe houses that appear all over New Mexico. There are the ochers and siennas of the high desert plateau. This time of year the landscape is stark and muted.

I see the colors of the landscape bathed in intense light which I somrtimes find harsh. But it is New Mexico and it still is the land of enchantment.

My studio and online Holiday sale is still happening now through December 31, 2014. The above painting is available.

A Sense of Place

As October came to a close so did my abstract landscape painting class taught by Pauline Agnew in Ireland. It was a very successful class for me. I not only learned new techniques, but I let myself experience the pleasure of loosening up my painting style. My horizon lines are now getting a little ambiguous, which is a good thing.

All of my daily class assignments will remain online for a year, and I plan to go back and do some similar work sometime in the near future.

Here are a few things I learned:
1. Acrylic paint and paper are interesting together, but I would rather paint on canvas.
2. Trying new things is a wonderful way to increase one’s repertoire.
3. It is a little difficult to see the blues and greens of Ireland and paint in New Mexico.
4. Oil pastels need to be protected with a frame and glass.
5. I like to have my work critiqued.
6. I like having a daily assignment.
7. I enjoy painting in an abstract way.
8. Now I really want to go to Ireland.

Ann Hart Marquis, Sense of Place, acrylic on canvas

My last painting assignment directed me to attend to and paint what is called a “sense of place.” In other words, Pauline encouraged me to paint an area or location with which I am familiar. I have painted New Mexico many times so I wanted to paint something more intimate. What better place than my back yard?