Where I Stand- Near and Far

Late Afternoon at the Pond
8 x8 oil
Available at Deborah Paris Fine Art

There's an old bit of advice- attributed to Corot- that most landscape painters have heard: start your landscape about 50 feet in front of where you stand. Another version says your visual starting point should be about the distance you can throw your hat. Its also useful to remember that the horizon will always be about your eye level, and will rise and fall depending upon whether you are standing on a hill or down in a hollow. And then there is the question, the most compelling to me, of whether to show the viewer an intimate corner of nature or a grand view. In every case, the artist is the yardstick, the measuring tool. And so the choices we make become a sort of mini manifesto of our art. We say to the viewer: "Stand here and look there. This is how I see it."

Early on, I was seduced by the big view. In Florida,where I was born, raised and lived until about 7 years ago, I was always looking for places where things opened up- where I could see long distances. So, I tended to paint marshes and salt water flats or the open pasture land of the ranches near my studio. Then, I went in search of bigger views out West- I could look out at endless mesas and mountains from my studio in New Mexico and I regularly traveled to Colorado, Arizona and Wyoming to paint the vastness of the American West. I went to California and painted the spectacular views of Big Sur. But, all during those years I would often find myself painting a stand of aspens on a hillside instead of the mountain vista, a high country pond instead of the dramatic waterfall or moonlight on a tidal pool instead of the huge bluffs or cliffs above. Truthfully, those were my better paintings.

I don't think one is better than the other- near or far. I think it depends completely on who the artist is- who is the yardstick, the measuring tool. But in my case, I have come to know that my passion is for the more intimate view. It is there- at the edge of a field or the corner of a pond- that I am most able to show what I see in this world. And so, that is where I stand.