Jim Riley wrote:
"I too have choosen portraiture over still life, landscape or whatever, and have some fond and moving memories and stories relating to the response from some of my efforts. I love it!

I must say, however, I believe it a mistake to suggest that because our work is more readily measured against it's specific goal and purpose and that the subject and execution of landscapes or still life is somehow an accumulation of things that don't "matter" seems unfair."

I agree with Jim's statement. I had an experience this summer that relates to this. I went backpacking in the Olympic Mtns over Memorial weekend with some friends and brought a camera and art supplies in place of a fishing pole. (I don't fish) I painted a watercolor scene with two fishermen, both of them friends who had hiked with us. I had the painting at a local show and the wife of one of the men bought it for her husband for his birthday. This was his comment when he received it: "It makes me feel just like I felt when we were there." His statement showed me I had accomplished my purpose with that painting - evoking feelings of the beauty of our Northwest.

That said - I still love portraits, and somehow feel that I won't be a "real" artist until I excel at portraiture.

I will admit that about 3 seconds after striking the enter key I could think of a dozen ways in which the placement of a cloud might matter. It was a simplified example. I was trying to suggest that it "matters" to the portrait painter that they must accomplish specific goals. It seems to me that this specificity is something which certain types of personalities seek out. And it may be the (seeming) lack of specificity which may account for the dissatisfaction a portrait painter feels when trying to produce a landscape.

I remember from Atelier Lack that when painting a still life of fruit, you are painting that particular apple, no other apple...an apple as individual as any face you might see. When I look at Ivan Shishkin's landscape portraits, and they are portraits of landscapes, I could walk through a forest and find that tree. That tree which he has painted is unlike any other in the forest. If I might humbly offer for your consideration, that the reason so many of us grow dissatisfied with painting landscapes, is because we are not trained to see what the accomplished landscape artist sees. We see a generic tree (or cloud...) and say, "...this isn't interesting because there are no perimeters", but a landscape artist sees a tree, and a cloud, and a clump of grass that is unlike any other that has ever existed. When he paints that clump of grass, it is as individual as an eye, that cloud is as precious and fleeting as a smile.

Peggy

Sargent agrees
 

JSS said the same thing to a student one time and Fechin said almost the same thing to someone wanting to jump right into figures. Subject matter is just an excuse to paint and "stuff is stuff."

I have just found the difficulty factors thread and was directed to this one.

Karin, you say that you cannot paint landscapes. I would like to ask if you were sitting outdoors drawing or painting or working from a photo in the studio. Can you tell if it is the coloring or the vastness and wildness of the outdoors or perspective that throws you off? Painting nature is probably a specialty that requires a different spirit than portraiture and still-life work in a controlled environment.

John Pence
 

I was just looking at the Pence Gallery and was struck by how many of those artists can and do paint everything well in several cases. I see lots of Italian atelier trained folks there.

I attempted to clean my studio and while doing so found this old slide of a painting (watercolor) that I did folowing a business trip to the northeast coast of Spain where I completed a collection of screen printed cork wallpapers. This is a small commercial fishing boat. The lamps are actually oversized and used for night fishing. They actually use four or five lamps but the compositions/my ability couldn't manage that many.

The roses are something I often paint as gifts. I usually do them in white or red but knew the recipient liked yellow.

And the roses.

Lovely Jim
 

delicate

I have tried landscapes both outdoors and indoors. The problem until now has been composition, i.e., the organization of the painting. I had a lot of trouble seeing depth and objects located at various distances unify into underlying abstract patterns, values and shapes. For some goofy reason, it is easy for me to do this with portraits.

I have been working on this for the past few months and have done hundreds of little landscape studies. I'm finally getting it.