Rezi Van Lankveld - At The First Clear Sight
I decided to look at Rezi Van Lankveld's work because I was drawn to the ambiguous paintings she created, and her textured marks she made that suggest shapes, figures and landscapes.
Having read this book I was interested in what it mentioned at the beginning; 'for ages we tended to see a work of art as a reflection or representation of the world around us'. Artists' work now is less of a representation, and more an interpretation; it is a response to the world around them that reflects a mood, or their feelings. Sometimes their work is not visually comparable at all, which leads the viewer to look more intensely at the artwork in order to understand it, looking at the gestures, brushstrokes and colour.
The book also talks about the projection of the painters 'inner world'; the creating of an imaginary world, and how the viewer must interpret it. They might make out what they want to see from the abstract painting and thus creating their own world.
The book talks about the concept of decision making, and how there are infinite paths the painting could follow. The writer claims it is the act of painting that results in the decisions made rather than the outside world influencing these decisions, which links back to art no longer being a representation of the world around us.
I used these ideas for the basis of composition for the pieces in my project. The material I worked from originally were photos of a landscape well know to me. Like Hitchens painted the area he lived in, Sussex, I painted Suffolk, a place I have visited throughout my childhood. I decided to only look at the photographs beforehand and then create the piece after, and because the landscapes are familiar to me, the images were already in my head. This worked well because it meant the decisions I made were a consequence of painting/doing rather than creating a representational image of the landscape. It meant the pieces of art were much more personal to me in two ways; the decisions I made were based on how I felt about the landscape, and how I felt about the artwork. It also meant I was able to focus more on the textures and colours I was creating because I wasn't concentrating so hard on depicting the actual landscape.
By doing this I created an 'imaginary world' like Van Lankveld; my works are ambiguous and the viewer may see something different to what I see. Never the less, whatever they see is still a landscape of colour and texture (my project title).


Bibliography
Lankveld, R. (n.d.). Rezi Van Lankveld.