I'm not an Impressionist. I have no desire or intention to paint like Monet or Renoir. But those Impressionists have so influenced art since their time that it is now considered the height of artistic honesty to paint outdoors, as Monet and the other Impressionist landscapists did. Before the invention of photography, and after the development of "modern" painting in the eighteenth century, painters did sketches outdoors, maybe in oil or watercolor, but they finished their paintings indoors. The Impressionists did the whole thing outdoors, which was supposed to make it look bright and fresh and immediate, rather than studied and academic like the brownish, slick art they were rebelling against.

And then that wicked photography came along, which captured reality too well and violated the Biblical injunction against graven images of ensouled beings (which is why the Amish don't like having their pictures taken). By the middle of the nineteenth century, only a few years after its invention, artists already were using photography as reference for their work. Even famous ones such as Cezanne, Courbet, and Delacroix used photographs, and Degas depended heavily on photography to catch those "naturally unposed" moments in his images. By the twentieth century, art and photography were inseparable, and one of my favorite American painters, Charles Sheeler, was both an artist and a photographer. I haven't found out whether another of my favorites, Edward Hopper, used photographs, but I suspect he must have. And yet….there still seems to be something slightly dishonest about using photographs as reference for art.

I'm still roaming through central Pennsylvania. Wednesday was a very bright, hot day, with a hard sunlight beating down on dry fields. I would have liked to sit outside and sketch, but I would have been fried. Instead, as I have been doing all through my trip, I've been snapping dozens and dozens of effortless digital photographs. I am documenting the landscapes and buildings of Pennsylvania for later use in my studio. Since I don't have a whole lot of time, I can't spend hours painting or drawing outdoors even if I had shade to do it in. I did manage to get a couple of colored pencil sketches of vegetation in evening sunlight, after the heat of the day had passed.

Sheeler loved to paint and photograph farm buildings, including many in Pennsylvania, because their geometries are so simple and abstract. I am gathering Sheeler-esque images to work with, as well as more idyllic, pastoral landscapes full of August's golden light. My artistic intent is not to create a fresh, immediate impression. I know, from my twenty-first century perspective, that as soon as I have photographed that landscape, or as soon as I have set it down on paper with pencil or watercolor, I have created a false image. I crop and alter the photograph. I selectively remove things from the painting that don't fit in a harmonious composition. I omit telephone poles, power lines, signposts, trash, or cars which would get in the way of the ideal landscape I want to create. In a painting, I use color tricks and enhancement to make things look better than real. Even if I never took any photographs and did all my sketching outdoors, I would still be creating green lies in the name of art.

Posted at 2:34 am | link