Yesterday I went on a trip to the Abbot Hall gallery in Kendal to gain inspiration. During my visit I was able to gain a wide varitey of inspiration, from romanticism painting to the Boyle family contemporary pieces.
I was first struck by Philippe Jacques De Loutherbourg's 'Belle isle, windemere in a storm'. I admired this painting for capturing the power of the water and sublime power of nature. The fragility of the men in the image also further emphaised the powerlessness of humans when faced with the power of nature. I was also drawn to how Loutherbourg had painted the rock forms and hills which characterise the Lancashire landscape.
However of the paintings which I saw, I was undoubtly most inspired by Ruskin and Turner's watercolours. Turner's 'The Passage of Mount St Gothard from the centre of Teufels Broch (Devil’s Bridge)' shows immense rock faces painted in brilliant colours and hue's and a brilliant depiction of the natural world. Ruskin's 'Rocks and ferns in a wood, Crossmount.' I found to be more intriguing however for the sheer attention detail which Ruskin pays to all aspects of the natural world. This is seen through the varying textures and the detail of the ferns leaves. I was also stuck by the vivid colours which Ruskin uses. In a review written by Rachel Spence for FT.com a comparison between Turner and Ruskin is made which describes that 'His attention to the material world denies Ruskin the metaphysical heights reached by Turner but sometimes it takes him, and us, to paradise nonetheless."
Whole article link- http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/980349b4-27ae-11e4-ae44-00144feabdc0.html#axzz3QxZh3jIw
I then moved from looking at the historical paintings to the contemporary artists such as Autumn Richardson and Richard Skelton which I felt presented a interesting and alternative way of relating to the natural world rather than painting and observing in reverence and admiration. The description for the memorious earth exhibition describes that; "Their work is ‘informed’ rather than ‘inspired’ by landscape. It is not impressionistic, but the result of extensive research into specific places, topographies, ecologies and histories. Pages from their book-works frequently spill with word-lists drawn from varied sources: pollen diagrams, dialect glossaries, cartographic records, archaeological tracts - but their repurposing of this material as art is deeply humane, aimed at drawing the attention towards the lost, forgotten or overlooked; it celebrates the poetry and beauty that such attention can reveal, and gently urges each of us towards a more intimate relationship with our natural surroundings." I intend to draw upon this in my own practice as a way of relating with the natural world to not only admire but to study it. Furthermore I found this extremely relevant for my own ideas of how I can repurpose materials to become art mediums.
The last works which I saw during my study were the Boyle Families 'Contemporary archaeology'. However I had mixed feelings about these works. Though I found it interesting to view and study the samples which they had collected, I was unconvinced about these as artworks. I instead found they were merely a direct representation of the earth and therefore lacked meaning and intention. Though this is a meaning within their work I did not also feel the sense of selection and cataloguing. I felt the squares appeared more as pieces of set design. Therefore this has made me gain direct for my own work to continue to ensure that my work creates a intervention into the landscape rather than simply recreating it.