The “Southwest” Collection, Original Acrylic on Canvas, 12” x 12”

Art Musings

Apr 6

My latest collection, “Southwest” is series of 5 acrylic paintings, 12” x 12”, focused on the bare, stark almost other-worldy beauty of the landscapes of the Southwestern region of the United States. I have always loved the alien landscapes of places like Arizona and Utah, where strange saguaros and sage brush seem to rise from an unforgiving terrain, yet a terrain, whose mountains and rocky outcrops are awash in a fiery reddish brown. I had initially started this collection with the aim of entering it into a show whose theme is Southwestern landscapes. I was not accepted into the show but nevertheless, I took it as an opportunity to practice painting elements that for me were always a struggle such as rocky landscapes, mountains, muted backgrounds.

I would be remiss if I did not talk about the challenges as well as the joys of making art. Having said that, the Southwest collection has been, by far, one of the most challenging and difficult collections I have worked on. Despite the small size of the canvasses, 12”x12”, I found the whole experience rocky (pun intended). I had planned on spending a couple of days on each painting, (as I had realized the less time I spend on a painting, and the faster I painted, the more enjoyment I got out of it, and the more dynamic and expressive and interesting the final result was). But alas, after selecting the reference image and settling on a composition and focal point, I found myself stuck somewhere halfway through the painting. I got into the phase of overworking certain elements trying to make them look like the reference image, all the while, trying to follow the rules of atmospheric perspective, and layering muted colors and leaving the vibrant colors till the final layers. I also struggled with shadows, specifically the shadows the various plants cast on the bare ground. I felt stuck, and would walk away from the painting for days, sometime a couple of weeks at a time. In fact, by the time, I started the fourth painting, I was determined to finish it quickly as I did not want to spend more time than I needed to overworking it, which is why, perhaps, the last 2 paintings in the series have an almost unfinished look to them. That is to say, they are less overworked than the first 3 paintings.

However, despite those challenges that almost made me quit the whole collection, I am glad that I soldiered on and completed it. I learnt a lot, not least of which is that if I just keep going with a painting, no matter how hopeless and frustrating the process may be, I will eventually reach a point where the painting makes just enough sense to the viewer without having to make everything super rendered. Also, instead of being bogged down with unnecessary details, a few brush strokes are often enough to convey the message to the viewer, and then the viewer’s eye fills in the rest of the details. I’m also grateful for the experience as it taught me a lot about using a very earthy, muted and limited color palette, which was strangely liberating, in a way, because I was not paralyzed by a multitude of choices, and it compelled me to mix my own colors, which gave me a much more diverse range of tones and values.