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The landscape is always changing. Had Van Gogh or Constable been alive today they would have depicted a somewhat different world. One role of the artist is still to examine the world as it is around them in all its contrasts of softness/hardness, ugliness/beauty and interpret it and make it personal.
Keeping a sketch book, taking photos, making notes on colour, looking at the work of other artists are all part of this process of collecting material to build the painting from. I scatter these ideas, notes, images on the floor and pin them on the wall. Many artists have them on their studio walls: they are there to prompt them to make those first tentative marks with a paintbrush.
Gradually the picture begins to take form and eventually begins a dialogue with itself and the scattered and pinned notes become less important; they have helped us launch ourselves into the unknown and after while we transfer our anchor from them to the painting itself. No doubt we will return to them as the painting loses its way. For a painting to reach some kind of resolution we need to lose our way with it at least once, often many times. Some of our best paintings will turn out to be the ones we hated the most during stages of making them.
This is why painting is still vital today, especially in our world of effortless images that surround us and tell us little of their creation and journey of becoming.
