Landscape Painting of Fagagna

 This is a slightly different blog post as where it is normally a day workshop or a process this painting was completed over the course of around three weeks, I worked on my landscape painting through the process of trial and error. By starting with finding inspiration to slowly generate ideas as the painting process progressed, I documented the entire process and will link a QR code and website link to my film posted on youtube. 

My idea generation for this piece started from a simple photograph of my partner's eye, which gave me so much inspiration that it completely inspired the poem I wrote. That then sparked the entire process and design of my painting. 

Through His Eyes

What does he see?

Is the grass greener?

Is the ocean clear and tranquil?

Does the sun shine brighter?

or is the world just cleaner?

Living amongst a society of lies,

not wanting to acknowledge the truth,

and open his eyes.

Unable to see the toxicity and destruction,

too easily influenced,

seduced and under instruction. 

While the ocean becomes polluted,

with bottles and plastic bags,

it remains undisputed.

Deforestation taking place,

due to humanity's greed,

and need for space.

Animal's becoming extinct,

losing their habitats,

doesn't it seem linked.

Yet he remains blinded like the rest of humanity,

continuing to destroy life as we know it,

with such insanity.

By Dina Hurst

After I had wrote the poem I felt inspired by my nan's hometown in Italy in Fagagna where when she lived there before the start of WW2 the sunflower fields were beautiful, tranquil and clear. Which soon changed after she left during WW2 where so much chaos and destruction destroyed all the lands and the toxicity of mankind destroyed beautiful acres of sunflowers. That made me want to emphasise the destruction and toxicity mentioned within the poem through my painting and the chosen place I based my painting on as well as adding a personal touch to the painting. 

To start my painting I began by outlining all of the areas of my painting before underpainting all of the areas except the sky that I left in the white colour of the painting. The first area of the painting I started painting was the grass where I began on the central hill first, using acrylic paint all mixed by hand using corn flour to thicken the paints to add more texture to the grass. I then repeated this process for the rest of the grass areas including the trees.  

After I finished painting all of the greenery areas I began to paint the sunflowers building them up layer upon layer, again using corn flour to thicken the paints and again mixing all of the colours myself. I layered individual sunflowers one by one lightening the tone of paint each time and finishing the flowers off with white paint and brown centres to bring the sunflowers to life. I tried to keep all of the colours extremely vibrant to emphasise the life within the land. 

To finish up the painting I painted the house using acrylic red-brown colour, black, white and a dark brown (all mixed with corn flour to thicken) to create the tiles on the roof showing town and depth, then I used the red-brown colour with white to paint the windows on the front of the house. I then used the grey scale to paint the church/bell tower to the left of the house where I mixed a variety of six different grey tones differentiating from light to dark. Once I had painted the house I started to paint the top of the cyprus trees where I added a larger amount of corn flour to the paint to make it a lot thicker than the other areas of the canvas to make the individual strokes stand out a lot more prominently. The green colour palette I used for the trees was all darker tones compared to the grass with slight hints of light green to break apart the dark tones and add highlights to and create the depth within the strokes. Once I achieved the texture of the trees I started to paint the sky where I approached it completely differently to how I approached the rest of the painting, as I used only one darker tone of blue and one lighter tone of blue and layered them to show depth and highlight using an old sock to blend it and create a slightly blended yet textured appeal, where I then added clouds using white paint and the sock directly on top of the blue to make it pop a lot more and seem more realistic. 

Once my painting had fully dried I started to add the finishing touches where I started to hang garden netting over the top of my painting and added a pea netting over the top which I knotted and detangled less to show an element of destruction. After I had added all of the layers of netting I then weaved in dead sunflowers into the net to show the decaying, mouldiness of what was once beautiful becoming destroyed, losing life and slowly dying, losing all it's vibrant colours. 

                          

To show the process of the painting and showcase the poem I made a film compiled with clips of the entire process of my painting I edited my film on Premiere Pro and added a voiceover I recorded of myself saying my poem as a narration over the top. Also I added extra sounds of me scratching and moving the dead sunflowers around that I layered over the top of the parts of the poem where I spoke about destruction. I added short clips of my partner's eye throughout the film where it linked back to the poem to keep the reference to his eye due to the poem being about through his eyes and being blinded by a false reality. Below I have added a QR code that will take you to my youtube channel where I have posted my film. 

I think that both my painting and my film were successful as I experimented with both fairly new processes and ways of making them both, yet feel as though I succeeded in the execution of both. What I believe worked really well was the narration of the poem over the top of the film and how the film shows the process of my entire painting and was displayed next to the painting. Also, I think the texture I achieved by adding corn flour to the paints worked really well as well as, I created lots of texture and depth through the thickness of the paints. If I was to do this again I would destroy the canvas a lot more in other ways, such as burning the corners to show more destruction or rubbing dirt over the top of the painting to make it appear dirtier. An alternative way of creating this piece of work could've been using more of the wet felting process to create the grass to be more expressive and have a larger range of materials. Then to add to it I could use actual sticks and leaves to create the trees, used multiple real sunflowers for the sunflower field, and even use plaster and make a relief casting of a house like shape to make it stand out from the background much more three dimensionally. Aspects of my practice that could be improved upon are the research that went behind it as it wasn't as in-depth and widespread as I originally planned it to be, and I could've been a lot more time efficient that could've allowed me to add some finer details.