What Drives My Art?
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What Drives My Art?
Andy Sumner
In my landscape painting, my first thought is to light and its companion, shadow, as these can transform even the most ordinary of scenes into a world of unexpected beauty and secrets.
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Hence, I look for light that is unusual or dramatic. The golden horizontal rays of late afternoon, setting things ablaze with intense colour and casting long deep shadows. The subtle filtered glow of moonlight, the half-imagined phosphorescence of night, the short-range flare of a fire or a lamp post, the burst of sunlight through a dense forest canopy or as it peeks over the horizon to start a new day.
I sometimes look for a sense of meaning or message in my work, usually driven by my passion for environmental issues, but my focus is always on conveying the beauty and wonder in what I see or imagine. My choice of colours is often driven by what I feel, or what I sense belongs in a scene, and I often stray towards a degree of abstraction in order to convey drama and emotion.
Mostly I paint with acrylic and acrylic inks on birch panel, canvas or paper, and sometimes I use oils for impasto highlights of important features. My technique involves countless translucent glazes, steadily building up texture, depth and richness in colour – a method that acrylics are perfect for due to their fast drying time. I often begin a work with only the vaguest idea of what I want to achieve, allowing the painting to tell me what it needs.
The exploration of light, colour and expression of emotion through art is compelling to me, I cannot go a week without working on a new creation, each a continuation and a development of the one before.
When I first started painting, I thought it was about capturing what I saw and relating that to the viewer but have found it’s much more profound than that. My painting is intensely personal, revealing my inner hidden self in the form of visible colours, saying what I could never express in words. Every time I paint, I create something within me, developing as a person and enriching my soul.