Its Own Landscape – painting Dan Beck 2010

Seemed like a good time to add a recent image.  Like the last painting and article below – this painting is not so much based on anything in particular but more about color and clouds.

The title speaks for itself – the painting is its own place – not a completely implausible place but not particularly based on anything recently seen or any recent scene, as it were.  Interesting how similar a meaning of those two words seen and scene … such as “seen in passing” or “passing scene”.

I guess my hope for such a painting – and as is the case for me – it is familiar enough looking yet different enough to be fun to look at.   My visual experience is never going to be exactly like anyone else’s experience – even if it is a shared experience.  We come to the world differently – and it is beautiful that there is such variation.

The colors, composition, and clouds speak to me – perhaps they will to you as well.

See Where It Goes – original digital art -Dan Beck 2010

A recent cloud formation was so inspiring to look at – I thought it would be fun to kind of bask in the memory – exploring my own representation of clouds without referring directly.

After all, no rendition can ever capture the experience – no memory can capture an experience …

but art can be experienced again and again – and in the process of making it – one can get lost in a world that is its own.

I am on a campaign of trying to be true to myself – not that this is a big departure.  I have painted the Salinas Valley landscape for a number of years now – partly to pay homage to the beauty here – partly as my own personal challenge to try to communicate the feeling it gives me – and partly because representational art has generally gotten better response than my abstract – but not always.

And frankly why do I care about response – because I am human and like to believe I am doing more than talking to myself.

Today, however, and in the art above – I know I am talking to myself – if anyone else chooses to listen – fantastic.

But today it doesn’t matter.

Open Fields – digital art painting – Dan Beck 2009

This was painted approximately two months ago – the colors of everything have changed a bit since then – more brown in the fields – more blue in the sky – the change of seasons is subtle here in the Salinas Valley, but still noticeable.

This was a remarkably loose painting – my recollection was to capture that quick glance of field workers – in the distance – in multiple groups upon the backdrop of very open fields.  Looking at the painting today, I feel I captured these undulating and exposed fields.

The workers are more colors than people – probably hinting of the way the workers blend into the scene and are not seen or even thought of by most people. There is a tremendous amount of back bending work that goes into our being able to eat produce – and there is meant to be a kind of vulnerability from the open vastness of these picking fields.

Is the power in those floating electrical towers or in the people, clouds or hills?

See Also

• Composition of the Bend – a somewhat similar piece from a different time and curiously mentions three paintings I just hung up in a rather impromptu exhibition at a local coffee shop
• Digital Painting – never hurts to check out a little explanation and process