When Observation Meets Imagination

Or, what I learned from Rembrandt.

  I have been devoted to observing my subject as I paint it for as long as I have been painting. In the late seventies at art school I worked from the model to learn gesture, tone, and expression as well as anatomy. (I worked with the late, great Dean Keller, and that is probably the subject for another blog post!)I started to focus on oil painting and the landscape around 17 years ago, first learning from Janet Manyan, who sent me to read the Hawthorn book and who stressed the idea of direct observation and continued practice, among other things. Working en plein air has been been my schoolroom and my playroom for years. When not outside, I continue to work from the model. I expect to keep going that way--- but lately the idea of using memory and imagination has taken hold. Where is the intersection of observation and memory/imagination in a painting?

  Rembrandt is partly to blame for this veering off the observation trail. He reached forward from the 17th century to the 21st to demonstrate the possibilities available to the wanderer on memory lane. Looking closely at his art recently, the clarity of his observing eye in early to mid career is astounding. The variety of human expression and form, the surfaces of objects and the palpable reality of his painted spaces speaks volumes about the expressive power of observation. But his imagination and use of his interior life obvious in the late works as it marries the keenly observed subjects of the paintings is so compelling.

  Well, I do know that I am not the next Rembrandt, but still there is the challenge of following the master in looking for that avenue that connects observation to imagination.  To that end, and with baby steps, I flounder a bit then begin following that idea by taking a daylight subject that I am fond of and painting it as a night scene. The plan is to open the memory pathways during the painting process. I have observed sketches done in the late light but in different locations, and drawings of the harbor scene done in the daylight. I'll combine everything and try to pull out memory of that scene at night.

  My sketches and the beginning of the painting I am working on are below.

Here is an early stage of the painting in progress:

  Are you devoted to pure observation only, or pure memory or imagination? Or looking to combine them? All approaches have merit, and the work itself aways changing and growing is the reward of the search. Paint on my friends!