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robert
collins
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Returning to a landscape When a landscape painting is finished I usually turn to the view and thank it. It is a silly ritual. I say 'thank you place'. Sometimes I have returned to scenes that I painted many years before. It is a strange experience. On approaching the view there is excitement and anticipation. I begin to recognise familiar features, some trees, a building, some distant hill. A few feet from where I painted, it is still only familiar but on stepping into the actual spot something else happens, something in my brain clicks into place and not just parts of the view but every detail of the scene takes on a familiarity that is intimate and personal. I remember the individual shape that a branch made in my composition, still there after ten years maybe, or the shape that the sea makes between the distant hills. Of course the light is not the same and other details may have changed but having spent those hours there recording the subtle nuances of shape and colour in that particular view, there is a sense that in the relationship between us there is something intensely personal. |