Wednesday, August 01, 2007

Gardens in Art: scope and resources

The Rill Garden, Wollerton Old Hall
12" x 16", coloured pencil on Art Spectrum Plein Air Board
copyright Katherine Tyrrell

In August, my monthly project is going to focus on "gardens in art". By this I mean:
  • looking at drawings and paintings of gardens
  • studying how different artists have responded to the motif of 'the garden' in order to understand more about different approaches to drawing and painting the garden
  • identifying possible influences for my own work
  • producing more work of my own around the theme of 'gardens'.
I'm open to suggestions about which artists and which topics to look at. You'll find a very provisional list of possibles below. I'm not sure how the project will develop at the moment as I'm rather feeling my way - but I suspect I'll mix generic themes with the development of my own art.

If people would like to participate - either in terms of commenting on my posts or producing art it'll be great to have company of the journey!

Gardens and art: some possible generic themes
  • gardens which inspire artists
  • artists who inspire gardens
  • how gardens have been painted over time
  • how gardens vary by country/culture
  • Monet and Giverny.
  • Van Gogh - specifically focusing on his treatment of gardens in drawings and paintings
  • Arts and Crafts Gardens - including William Morris's gardens.
  • the kitchen garden (because I love walled kitchen gardens!)
  • examples of contemporary painters of gardens
Developing my own art: a developing agenda
  • a review of my approach to date
  • thinking about composition possibilities - how to tackle gardens as a subject
  • seasons and colour palettes
  • pure media versus mixed media
  • abstracted versus
Some resources and links

I'm very conscious that the two words 'artist' and 'garden' seem to get linked in a number of very twee ways which I'll be seeking to avoid at all costs. For the moment, let's just say it's making searching on the internet "interesting"!

Here are some links which I've found relating to artists and gardens:
and these relate to gardens:
Here are some books which I expect to be consulting:
So - that's where I've got to - lots to do plus lots of gardens to revisit I hope! If you'd like to make any suggestions please use the comments facility. If you'd like to join in please leave a note of your blog post address and I'll visit and find your project posts this month.

Note about "The Rill Garden": I developed "The Rill Garden" from material collected (sketch and photos) during my visit to Wollerton Old Hall in April. This a link to my blog post about the visit and the sketch I completed at the time.

You can also see a slideshow of completed paintings of gardens in the gallery devoted to Houses and Gardens on my website.

3 comments:

  1. Wow Katharine. It looks so velvety. I really like it.

    ReplyDelete
  2. wow. I love the textures of this drawing.

    ReplyDelete
  3. Hi Katherine,
    really beautiful work !!

    ReplyDelete

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