Painting, Photography, and the Creative Process
by Kenn Backhaus
A short summary of this blog post:
Kenn discusses the choice between painting and photography, focusing on why artists might alter or interpret scenes differently.
He views subjects as ideas, varying from narrative to mood-oriented.
Kenn reflects on his transition from commercial art to fine art, emphasizing the challenges of capturing light, atmosphere, and mood in landscapes.
The importance of creating unique, narrative-driven compositions is highlighted, influenced by his background in visual communication.
He advises students to articulate their artistic intent in a short paragraph before painting.
Kenn explains his use of photography to capture scenes for later studio work, acknowledging its practicality despite preferring plein air painting.
He stresses the importance of composition, color, and capturing the essence of an idea in his paintings, blending outdoor studies with photographic references as needed.
Kenn was recently asked a question on editing photographs:
If the intention is the narrative image, why not just edit the photo and print it? If the intention is the materiality of the paint, why not just paint without photo reference? What is the artistic intention that compels you to paint photographs of things and not just things?
This was Kenn’s answer:
Let’s discuss the topic of photography or painting and why we wish to edit or change a scene. The answer can come in a couple of different ways to the intent of the IDEA. First of all , I consider the subjects and or scenes that I wish to translate as IDEAS. Some ideas can be more of a narrative, others can be of the pure subject with few other elements to compete and then again the idea may be more mood-oriented. The artist needs to define what it is that caused them to stop along a walkway or stop their car and back up on a road to observe the scene of interest better.
Having painted with many other artists together and also by myself, I can say there are multitudes of reasons why one artist hesitates and begins to contemplate while the others keep walking. Many of those conditions that cause that hesitation can come from many conditions. Some are just pure design elements of a light effect and then others could stem from past experiences or the love of a particular subject matter, many reasons abound. Whatever the reason, we all take in the wide outdoors in slightly different ways. Much of my art school education and training was surrounded by the concept dealing with visual communication. My professional introduction to the visual arts came as a working professional illustrator and designer exercising the concepts around visual communication.
My visual communication studies took me to the greats in Illustration from the likes of N. C. Wyeth, Howard Pyle, Harvey Dunn, Dean Cornwell, and many others. Many of their efforts were used to narrate stories giving the reader an actual scene that they themselves may or may not have ever conceived. When I first began to make my transition from commercial art to fine art, I thought I would be able to sever most of those taught visual communication skills and just paint pure landscapes, still life, or portraiture. I like most beginning landscape artists struggled to capture what was in front of me...the light effect, the atmosphere, and the mood to name a few challenges and then try to compose, draw the shapes, and observe and capture the values and color shifts correctly... wow that was a big eye opener as to what I really didn’t know! Later after many years of developing and honing those aforementioned skills, I was feeling pretty good about my translations of what nature challenged and put in front of me.
During my earlier days of participating in many plein air events, there came a time when conversing with some collectors at an event that I had been competing in for many years, one of the collectors asked a question regarding the type of scenes that were being painted for numerous years in a row. His question was bold but serious...how many of the same paintings of the rocks along the shoreline or the pier with boats, can we as collectors expect to buy? Every year we come to this event and the same subjects are being painted and we have walls filled with them already! That was a great eye-opener and a realization that it really is up to the artist to create something that might be most unusual or unexpected. I took the question to heart and began thinking more like my earlier days when I was creating illustrations for whatever product or story was to be illustrated. I needed to take a different approach other than just the mere translation of a scene on a canvas with paint. Sometimes, even a different vantage point of that same scene would bring a fresh look or a more meaningful pictorial.
The concept of finding a story within or if I was to write a story about this particular scene that I am inspired by, makes more of it than what I am just seeing right now. This concept was one that created uncomfortable results in the beginning, sometimes wanting to stay too true to the subject and not letting go of things in the scene that were not essential. I thought just translating the effects in the scene was already tough enough, now I’m trying to make more of the scene and begin to become more narrative with it. This was a dog fight in the beginning and sometimes I was trying to do too much and sometimes forgetting the natural beauty in the scene that I might be excluding. After some losses, but also some gains, seeing the results in regards to more interest and sales of my works in comparison to others, helped assure me that this might have some legs after all. I realize that I have created a lot of sentences here but have not yet answered your questions. I needed to set up the background to why I do what I do and why I teach what I teach.
This was an important discovery for me...when we are attracted to a scene in nature we have probably observed and taken in much around that particular scene. Much of what is to the far left or right, up or down of our chosen subject, does have a lot of inclusion in the ultimate cropped scene. The problems begin for the artist when he or she begins to crop that scene into a workable format. We end up eliminating much of what we have already experienced of the whole scene. We are all familiar with short videos or movies of a subject and aware that much more information can be quickly conveyed through that type of visual format. When the artist has just one pictorial to give to the viewer, you need to make the visual idea as best as it can be. Whatever your motive is... mood-oriented, subject-oriented, vagueness, poetic, strength of chroma, monochromatic, etc., it needs a number of elements that make it a strong pictorial. This is where I have found that first, you need to establish your interest as an IDEA, what is it that you find inspiring and attracting to the scene, answering that will give you what the idea is.
I suggest to my students to write a short paragraph about what you are wanting to paint. If you can’t even come up with an interesting short paragraph about the scene, maybe the scene you have chosen is not very interesting to begin with. If you can write an interesting short paragraph about the scene, then put your description in the language of paint. It will work as a visual. Along the way, I have discovered as I mentioned earlier, that there may be elements in the scene that have no value and could easily be edited out, or there may be elements that could be added or made more interesting to help visually with the pictorial.
Why do I occasionally use photographs? Good question...If I had my options I would rather paint outdoors every day. For myself, I have to be realistic I can’t do that every day and many a time when I have been out painting or on a trip overseas, I may be packing up for the day and see a wonderful scene on the way back home or to the hotel. I would be remiss if I didn’t use a capture device to record the scene the best without having the opportunity to paint it. I personally don’t feel indifferent about using a photograph to work from and over the years I have learned much from my outdoor experience that I can bring that to the studio when needed.
Why not just edit the photograph? My end result or product is a painting, with hopeful brush marks that are competent, shapes and values that are accurate, with colors that express the light effect of the mood of the scene, all composed and painted in such a style that allowed that chosen idea to live as best as it can be on the canvas. The best way I love to work in the studio is from a quick on-location study that may have great value and color structure but may not have the best composition or the detail needed especially if I was to create a much larger version of that idea. When painting my quick on-location studies, I will take written notes, or memorable notes and or capture numerous images of the scene with photography so that I can use the combination in the studio if needed. I go out and collect as much as I can of IDEAS, either with paint or with a capture device.
Any and every great master's painting has things you could identify in the pictorial. There are many paintings out there today that just reveal things and then there are paintings of ideas that have things that make up the idea. There is a big difference between the two. I, for instance, will sometimes paint or sketch “things” in my studies to better understand that particular topic, but they remain just that...a study. What all helps in the end, is when I want to paint that chosen IDEA!
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