Cliff Retreat

During the last six months, I’ve painted sea cliffs near my home as abstract landscapes.

What does it mean to abstract a landscape? A landscape is made up of a collection of shapes and lines and light and shadows. The elemental landforms serve as points of departure and more often than not scaffolding for my artwork.

To begin with, I develop a color palette that represents the mood I would like to create. I sketch out the composition, including tonal variations. I also experiment with brushwork, developing textures and patterns.

Cliff Retreat

Created on a sunny day, I represented the still heat with warm red and oranges hues. Straight from the tube colors like cadmium red and cadmium yellow are unnaturally bright. Inspired by the minerals in the land, I blended the red and yellow pigments with earth colors — yellow ochre and burnt umber.

I loosely created a vertical composition for the painting. Cliff tops were rendered with linear, meandering brushstrokes. I blocked in rounded and stacked sand dunes.

Gradually, the painting took on a life of its own. When it came time to paint the foreground, I inserted an imaginary town at the foot of the cliffs and a dusty landscape. The hamlet added some weight, a dynamic foundation to anchor the bluffs.