Tightrope walking

     Evening Prayer Brunswick Heads,  early 2018, oil on canvas board 20 X 26 cm

Evening Prayer Brunswick Heads,  19 January 2019, oil on canvas board, 25 X 30 cm

What a difference two years of work make in a painting series. The palette has lightened up radically, and there is more concern towards the motif instead of towards a more personal and an expressive concern. Simply put, less of me and more of the motif.

There is always a danger, when working from Nature, that one can fall too much in love with the 'Motif' or Nature, creating a sentimental attachment. Yet conversely, one can remain too fixated upon one's own self-expressive feelings and conceptual obsessions  rendering one visually blind in front of what  Nature has to offer.

Myself, I think that the middle ground might feel like walking upon a tightrope to describe the work from Nature. One must not be too close to the sentimental in Nature, while at the same time, one cannot be too pulled into one's self.