Hello, in case you wonder this is my second post. I am trying to write things in chronological order, meaning that for a while I will be posting about paintings that I made sometime back, starting in 2019 when I moved to France. If you'd like to know a bit more about that, you can read it all on my first post immaginative titled "Hello".
This painting came about after one of our first excursions in the area after we moved to Gerardmer. It was October by then and, having watched the weather forecast we were determined to go on a long walk. We got up early to get the bus that would take us to the Col de la Schlucht, up on the mountain Crests ( that's what the geographical line that joins the rounded mountain tops is called. We are not talking high mountains here: the average high of the Crests is about 1200 metres)
Well, the start of our adventure wasn't promising, in fact we thought we had made a mistake the moment we stepped off the bus and were greeted by a massive bank of low cloud-fog and cold moist air. But on we went. The idea was to reach the shelter at the Hohneck (1400 m), have a coffee and start our descent towards Gerardmer trying to get in as many lakes as possible, that would mean a 30 km walk.
The fog remained consistent for the best part of our walk to the shelter, only to lift occasionally to reveal a vast landscape, an autumnal carpet of leaves or the odd chamois busy ruminating on the cliff's edge
But as the morning went ahead, the sun managed to burn its way through the clouds, that suddenly lifted revealing the most beautiful array of autumnal colours. We didn't get it wrong after all!
After a quick coffee we started our long and winding descent, which weirdly enough consisted in quite a large amount of uphill walking. We stopped for a picnic at lake Blanchemer, we continued towards lake Lande and the gorgeous Lispach, all bathed in the glorious autumnal sun.
Eventually, after one of our many detours, we arrived at the Balveurche: a large meadow with beautiful views over some of valley’s lakes. We had been there before for a sunset picnic, in the summer before our relocation, and we had loved it. Now it was even more magical: I am not going to go on about autumn, but wow, what a wonderful season.
And this is where the inspiration came about. There was the odd gust of wind which carried the tiny silver leaves off the nearby cluster of birch trees. They sparkled in the air like some kind of jewelled dust.
That walk went on for several more kms. What a beautiful day, but it was that spot in Balveurche that stayed with me the most. We have gone back there several times, in summer with friends and family or for quiet winter walks under the snow and it's always delivered its magic.
That particular day is what I have tried to capture with my painting. Of course, as it always happens with what I paint, the final result doesn't match or even resemble the real thing, but I hope that I manged to convey the emotions I felt in that moment.
The meadow in the foreground became this Pollock-esque abstract of line and dots. I like the contrast between the pale yellows and the confident blacks.
The birch tree forest caused me some troubles: I couldn't compete with its vibrancy, so I decided to go for a few orange, grey and ochre splashes and lots of white to mimic the silvery sparkle of the leaves. I think that it was at this point that I started to use the black line as a contour definer. It's something I don't want to depend on too much, but that I seem to go constantly back to.
The mountains... the damn beautiful mountains. That was hard. As I said in my previous post, I'm not really in charge of what I do, I let the brushes and colours decide, and they didn't seem to make up their mind either here. Underneath this final version lay several unsuccessful attempts, in the end I settled for these broad colour blocks with a touch of Fauve in them. Somehow, little scratches of red, like blessures, seemed to make the painting complete.
This is it for today, I hope you didn't find it too boring . Let me know which are the aspects of this journey I've just started here that you enjoy the most ( if any ) and those you could do without. Thanks for reading, Ivan.
absolutely love the way these turned out, I think they look even better than the inspiration!
Crikey that’s beautiful! And I enjoyed reading it all - wouldn’t cut a thing.