Jeffrey Janson: November 2012

Exhibition opens November 30
Images Gallery 1823 W. Wilson

Landscape studies | Summer 2012

These small paintings were inspired by the painter William Nicholson (British, 1872–1949), who was a society portrait painter, print maker and still life painter and who made small en plein air landscape paintings for his own pleasure. The pictures Nicholson made are profound but simple–even modest. They speak to me of the sheer joy in the process of recording the sensation in the moment of looking at landscape elements, and not only nature but also man made structures.

All the paintings below were done over a very hot summer of 2012, and because of the brutality of the weather, many were made in the studio from memory, color notes, and photographs. I sought to recreate the plein air experience in the studio.

One other note on the formal qualities of the paintings: although the size is fairly consistent I used many different color grounds, some pure pigment (e.g. cadmium red) and some scraped, buffed, mixed or layered with multiple colors. Click on images to enlarge.