Art from Source

I had an interview about my art yesterday from the Deputy Editor of a regional magazine for a feature early next year, which went really well considering my hearing was impaired with an ear infection! His questions were incisive and he asked me if there was a connection between my modern art and the landscapes I paint.

From the core of my being I love to paint both, but for a long time I couldn’t reconcile the two different approaches I was taking to give a unified philosophy or message to those who might be interested in my work.

As a human being I see no separation between my modern art and landscapes; I just enjoy painting both and if people get pleasure from them, then I have succeeded. It eventually came to me that there is a connection between my abstract art and landscapes: a strong one. The modern pieces are based on rock formations and patterns (in nature) - a ‘micro’ world and the landscapes are, perhaps, the ‘macro’ view we usually associate with the term ‘landscape’. Both are aspects of the landscape and with both my modern and landscape painting I try to draw the viewer into the view, into the earth and into themselves. The more time we spend in nature the better it is for us and beyond that sense of ‘wellbeing’ we get there can emerge a more profound sense that we are interconnected with it and by extension, each other. I’ve probably used the ‘micro/macro’ terms because of my love of photography, which I use for my landscapes and as a medium in itself.  

What I try to bring across is something of myself and (paradoxically) visualise myself as ‘an aperture through which the universe is looking at and exploring itself’ (Alan Watts). The viewer will bring their own experience and judgement to bear of course and their thoughts are as relevant as my own. I want to bypass the tendency many of us have to over-intellectualize art and give people something experiential, a connection, a sense of joy or peace. Whether this is a ‘fashionable’ idea or not doesn’t interest me, any more than using normative or ‘sanitized’ ways of describing what art is meant or not meant to be about, which often seems to conform to a marketised hegemonic view. Instead it feels more meaningful to talk about our individual experiences of art, what repels us and what touches us and if we need to be repelled at all…

If we look at sacred geometry in nature, these harmonious patterns are reflected in the tiniest and largest aspects of our universe, from a single snowflake to our spiral armed galaxies. It makes me realise that everything is, in John Donne’s words, ‘part of the main’ and that ‘no man is an island’. I can see this reflected in my art.

Richard K Potter BA Hons PGCE MA Website: www.richardkpotter.wix.com/richard

Community: www.creativity4wellbeing.com