Glen Sligachan, Isle of Skye
Watercolour, 16 x 25 cm
When I was a child at school, in English Grammar classes we were given an exercise called a précis. This involved taking a page of prose and reducing it to a paragraph. We did this by eliminating any unneccesary words and restructuring sentences. The idea was to convey the essential meaning in as concise a way as possible.
It occurred to me that this is exactly what I try to achieve in my paintings. I want to paint the subject concisely with the minimum of brush-strokes. In order to do this I have to ignore any detail which doesn't contribute something useful to the overall effect. I may also have to rearrange some elements for the sake of clarity or composition. I am not always as successful at this as I would like to be; it's not easy to do in front of a subject full of the detail visible to the human eye. I do feel though that the best paintings are usually the ones that are simple unfussy statements.
It occurred to me that this is exactly what I try to achieve in my paintings. I want to paint the subject concisely with the minimum of brush-strokes. In order to do this I have to ignore any detail which doesn't contribute something useful to the overall effect. I may also have to rearrange some elements for the sake of clarity or composition. I am not always as successful at this as I would like to be; it's not easy to do in front of a subject full of the detail visible to the human eye. I do feel though that the best paintings are usually the ones that are simple unfussy statements.
