SPRING SHOWER OVER BARNETTS MILL

Prints of this painting can be purchased here now: http://www.inprnt.com/gallery/jeremiahjolliff/

This is an Original Oil Painting executed en plein air by Fine Artist Jeremiah Jolliff

In the springtime, it is a great challenge to keep pace with nature because the weather is very changeable.  When I first began laying out the composition for this plein air painting, it was crystal clear outside.  By the time I began mixing up the paint, a whirlwind was well advanced with scud layer strato-cumulus swirling all over the sky.  The sky is the key to every single painting that is completed outdoors because the disposition of the sky is so thoroughly imbued throughout the entire scene.  If a painter “pegs” the sky, hopefully the mood will be captured and I reckon that is most likely the whole goal in a Landscape Painting.

I have found a treasure trove of knowledge from L. Birge Harrison’s book Landscape Painting.  There are so many parameters, elements and rediculous barricades to creativity.  The challenges to a fine artist are legion and are of two orders: the objective and the subjective.  It is up to the artist alone to struggle onward to glory.  Harrison’s elaborates: “In the modern scheme of things, the artist is the last rank individualist to survive.  For him the merger and the combination spell ruin.  Again we insist, and insist yet once again, that the very essence and marrow of art is personality.  Any surrender of personality, therefore, can lead only to one goal – the abyss of artistic worthlessness.”

The struggle in art making is meant to be perpetual because that is the only way to get to the spirit of the artist.  Harrison continues: “Personally, I know that my best work is always done the morning after a spree, when I come to the studio a bit shaky and with the nerves all on edge.”