“Elba” oil on canvas - 75cm x 100cm ©️Matthew Holden Bates, All Rights Reserved
In one of my latest posts I featured paintings of cities that I have visited. I am sure that just like all of you, traveling into nature is just as stimulating, if not more than going out to visit cities. I love to get out of my comfort zone to see a sunset, a beach or a mountain, and expand my horizons. When I get back to the studio, I love to capture the feeling that I just had in a painting. Landscapes allow me to have fun too. Painting cities is a very precise and taxing form of painting. Windows and doors have to be square and plumb, and everything relates to everything in a great grid that is always difficult to maintain throughout the entire composition. In a landscape there is more freedom to paint whatever you like. If a branch or a leaf is out of place, it’s ok, make a person walking down the street too tall and the whole piece is ruined.
“Tuscan Summer Road” oil on canvas - 60cm x 80cm - private collection - ©️Matthew Holden Bates, All Rights Reserved
In my landscapes I am able to let my mind wander, to a simpler place, a place that maybe I don’t know that well, a place that I would like to know better. I spend my days in the city of Firenze, a city with very few trees, lots of action and a chaotic existence that begs to escape from time to time. That is why I paint landscapes. Even though I am still in the studio, in the city, in my mind I am able to travel to a calmer place. Then when the painting is finished, I get to daydream all over again just by looking at the painting.
“Giglio Sunset” oil on canvas - 50cm x 35cm - private collection - ©️Matthew Holden Bates, All Rights Reserved
Sometimes I only get away for the weekend, and if I am lucky, and weather agrees with me, I get a new idea, a new image to capture forever the moment, like this painting above, we went the the Island of Giglio, in the Tuscan Arcipelago, just for two days, and I got to see the sun set into the sea, it was magical, and something that I certainly don’t see very often. The painting makes it all the more special, it is the culmination of the feeling that I had when I was there.
“Eagle Head” oil on canvas - 30cm x 20cm - private collection - ©️Matthew Holden Bates, All Rights Reserved
Sometimes a painting creeps up on me, something that I would have never thought of, like this seascape, in the snow, almost all white. It was so incredible to be there, no one else, just me and the sea, and the snow. The collector who bought the painting loved the minimalism, its simplistic tonal value, yet it captures the brutality of the winter weather.
“Volpaia” oil on canvas - 40cm x 60cm - ©️Matthew Holden Bates, All Rights Reserved
Landscapes can also be an opportunity to try something new. In the painting above, I played with the concept of macro photography to make my image for the painting. Using the macro setting, all of the foreground is in full detail, while the background goes blurry. This is actually what we see and it makes for a very satisfying image. It’s almost like what we focus on is in our RAM setting, and the background is lost to us, we consciously know that it is there, and of course we can look back and forth, changing the focus, but in the painting it remains macro, always allowing us to see the illusion.
“Manchester Sunset” oil on canvas - 60 cm x 40cm - private collection ©️Matthew Holden Bates, All Rights Reserved
I’ll end this post with an explosive piece, another sunset, I remember it was a chilly evening in winter, one of the things I love about paintings are that they remain cozy and warm inside the house, so we can experience the majesty of the image without the discomfort of the actual place and time. Paintings are so safe that way!
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