Circumstances and environment can nurture a love for nature that is both intimate and essential. Landscape painting is an expression of this fascination and this intimacy with nature.
As far as form is concerned, painting landscapes can begin with a copying of nature — but copying is nothing more than an initial framework that makes it possible to express the intensity within the artist. Very soon the artist moves from mere copying to striving for an internal harmony on canvas that corresponds to the artist’s compulsion to create beauty — and the painting acquires a life of its own.
Depending on moments, light and colors, the artist is in awe and wonderment before the vision — a wonderment that can become a complete immersion, a subjective joy. But capturing this vision on canvas is a long, often painful and inevitably unsuccessful endeavor, for never can the “coming together” of the artist’s perception and the artist’s aspiration be achieved.
While painting a landscape the artist moves from hope to despair, to hope again and then to a sense of failure but with the lure of success in the next endeavor … and so, it goes on …
Shahla Rafi
