Landscapes

19 April 2020 / 0 comment/Canvas, Paper/ Posted by: William Pettit

Landscapes

I have been painting landscapes since 1999, when I moved to Italy. I would pack my easel and a snack and go for long walks to paint. They began, as they should, as an appreciation of the beauty of the land. They have become, after twenty or so years, not a side project to the “real” work of abstraction, but rather the basis of it. The phenomena of nature are, in fact, the core of my work (and my teaching). Here, on site, is painting in its purest form—the experience of the elements, the subtle shifts in light, the flux of evolution through seasons and agriculture, the sun, the wind, the smell of lilacs, the smell of rain. They are a catalog of colors, shapes, and shadows, but also the record of a dialogue.

As Cezanne painted his mountain, I paint mine. Monte Soratte is visible everywhere in the Sabina, and seeing it and painting from different places at different times is an exercise not in repetition, but in infinite variation.