Light on Water V ©John O’Grady
8″ x 12″ x 1″, oil on deep edge panel, ready to hang.
SOLD
Light beams filtering through the clouds onto water is one of those sights I never tire of.
The west of Ireland is one of those places where patterns of dark and light move and shift across the water in rhythm with the weather fronts coming off the Atlantic. It’s nature’s free light show and worth stopping by to experience it.
The process of making this painting was not unusual. Balancing dark against light, warm against cool shapes against negative space,…All these things came into play but in addition I found myself working in a series of vertical and horizontal bands.
The movement of clouds shifting across the picture plain from right to left were counterbalanced with the vertical bands of light from top to bottom.
I kept shifting these rows and columns until they were arranged in a way that pleased my eye.
While doing this, I thought about Piet Mondrian’s work and how he evolved from a wonderful landscape painter into what appears to be an ‘abstract’ painter who worked with vertical and horizontal lines to express a spiritual dimension.
In 1914, he wrote in a letter to H.P. Bremmer:
“I construct lines and color combinations on a flat surface, in order to express general beauty with the utmost awareness. Nature (or, that which I see) inspires me, puts me, as with any painter, in an emotional state so that an urge comes about to make something, but I want to come as close as possible to the truth and abstract everything from that, until I reach the foundation (still just an external foundation!) of things…
I believe it is possible that, through horizontal and vertical lines constructed with awareness, but not with calculation, led by high intuition, and brought to harmony and rhythm, these basic forms of beauty, supplemented if necessary by other direct lines or curves, can become a work of art, as strong as it is true.”
When we look at the beautiful ‘Evening Red Tree'(1908), we can see how he was shifting towards the grid of patterns.
The early part of 20th Century art was moving towards modernism, abstraction and exploration and Mondrian was part of this milieu but what underlined his work was looking for some theosophical truth and underlying divine structure as evidenced in and through nature.
In his painting, ‘Victory Boogie Woogie’ (1942), his grid pattern has reached full maturity.
What’s interesting and arresting about Mondrian is that his work has an unbroken continuity. He retains his fascination and preoccupation with the grid and its underlying perfection is his goal.
Along with these musings, I recalled William Blake’s final two lines from the poem ‘The Tyger’ (1794, published as part of the Songs of Experience collection):
“What immortal hand or eye,
Dare frame thy fearful symmetry?”
I’d love to hear what you think on these musings.
What a dramatic sky. I love the way the clouds are edged with lace-like light.
Thank you Magalie. That’ was the part of the painting that took the most time! It was the silver lining.
How lucky for us, John, that you never tire of these views. What an exquisite sky, made even more powerful by the low horizon line. Your observations about balancing the horizontal and vertical components are fascinating, as is the Mondrian quote. I’ve often wondered why and how some artists move from representation to abstraction, and it seems clear that they are trying to capture the essence of what they are seeing (either before them in the world or in their mind’s eye) or feeling. Mondrian evolves not only into the underlying “divine structure” of the grid but also into primary colors (along with grey, in this case), from which all other colors can be blended!
In your painting the vertical and horizontal lines can be felt as movement — the organic motion of light and air through space. Whereas the grid captures this idea in a more static and idealized way, your image lives and breathes. In our minds we see not only this moment in time but also the ongoing motion of the clouds as they sweep across the sky, and as the light and shadow on the land and water move with them.
Hello Jo,
Yes that low horizon line really helps to set the focus on the sky. Thank you for the insights into Mondrian’s use of colour and that simplification into the primaries, he really pared it back to the essence didn’t he?
I read the final paragraph of your comment, with great interest Jo. I agree with the whole paragraph. I was particularly drawn to the phrase ‘the organic motion of light and air through space’. That has got me thinking, thank you very much
I found your blog very interesting John and particularly the spiritual dimension to Mondrian’s work as he pared his paintings down to what he saw as the true essence of a scene; it is ironic that some have regarded his work as ‘cold’ or unemotional. In your wonderful ‘Light on Water V’, as in your landscapes more generally, it is the mood, the atmosphere or what could be described as the feeling and emotion that comes to the fore. In this case, the horizontal and vertical bands which you elucidate so well evoke the ever-changing motion of weather and the transient effect it has on light and colour whether land, sea or sky. How could one ever tire of nature in all it’s subtle, shifting glory.
Hello Chris,
He is an interesting painter with as you say the ‘spiritual dimension’ to his work. He really followed his own inner voice, although I am more drawn to the landscape pieces which teeter on the edge of abstraction.
Thank you for your thoughts on the painting. I am glad it transmitted mood and atmosphere to you. I read with pleasure your final sentence about nature’s ‘subtle shifting glory’