CONJURORS: Artit's words and works | ALLAN MACDONALD

CONJURORS

Artists are manipulators, maybe even conjurors. Something out of nothing, usually the domain of God. It’s not out of nothing though: it’s a melding of the artist themselves (Emile Zola defined an artwork as a ‘corner of creation seen through a temperament’), the natural world and the sheer mystery of their existence. The big surprise would be if we weren’t profoundly affected by the landscape and universe around us. It should overwhelm us on a daily basis.

How did it come to this though? Especially when we remember that in the past hierarchy of genres, landscape painting was one off the bottom, just above the lowly still life.

It might be tempting to give the credit for this transformation to Impressionism or Post Impressionism, but there were other strains at work too. From the emergence of Dutch landscape painting (Van Ruisdael) through German Romanticism (Runge, Friedrich), Symbolism (Boecklin, Munch) and on to Rothko right up to a present-day artist like Peter Doig, we can trace the altered perception and manipulation of the natural world. Far from being a backdrop, or a mere sensory experience, it became the raw material for artists to project their own imagination, their own thoughts, a ‘recomposing of reality.’

The question has to be asked, ‘why does the natural world have such a profound effect on us?’ Is it because it’s a constant in the perpetual flux around us? Is it neutral ground, a blank canvas, a no man’s land between me and everyone else? Are we in some way separate from it, above it? Can we see ourselves in it? Is it an echo, a hint (even a megaphone) of something greater, deeper? Is it intentionally beautiful? Or preordained? Otherworldly? Is it remorselessly hostile and meaningless? Is my perception of it radically different from someone else’s? Is it ours? Has it got restorative, healing qualities? If so, why?

Questions questions. Within the answers to these questions lies our understanding of not just the natural world but who we are ourselves.

In the group of paintings submitted for this show, I’ve used the same raw materials (blazing Autumn sun, golden beech trees, a slow-moving river and a figure on a paddleboard) and reshaped them. A single moment has been expanded into something lasting. Arnold Boecklins painting ‘Isles of the dead’ was once described as a ‘solid embodiment of the beyond’ and I’ve tried in these paintings to revisit this subject, within the particularity of an actual experience.

Emile Nolde, the German Expressionist painter, said: ‘Reproducing nature faithfully, accurately, does not create a work of art. Transmuting nature by adding one’s own emotional and spiritual values turns the painting into a work of art.’ There is really no such thing as landscape painting. There is only painting.

Allan MacDoanld, Inverness-shire October 2023