Exercise 3-Impossible Views

Think the impossible… in landscape painting at least! What might this mean? In this exercise, you will construct a landscape painting (with or without figures) that attests to a factual (scientific, that is) impossibility.

Images can be impossible in various ways: some parade paradoxical illusions (think of the stairs of M. C. Escher), where figures move up and down at the same time. Then there are invocations of the past made present - dinosaurs roaming about a city, for example. More subtly, there are paintings that present an integrated unity of perhaps plausible elements, which on closer inspection come to seem rather outrageous, outside of the realm of the imagination. Such paintings might well present us with a world to look across or onto. Here, the painting sets the rules!

In the last exercise, we considered arrangements of things in space, in order to create a successful near and far. Here, we will think more about juxtaposition.

1. Find between 3 and 7 objects/ buildings/ figures/ animals/ shapes/ forms/ things of one sort or another that sit uneasily together.

Sitting uneasily can be the result of temporal or spatial dislocation, or it can be the result of vastly differing scales, or it can be the result of some things occupying the realm of the real and other things the realm of the imagined or even the dreamed. Moreover, difference and incompatibility can be of colour, or of intention, or of origin, or of use...things can be man-made or otherwise, or discordant, or misused. To view the impossible is simply to construe and realise in paint an arrangement of uneasy companions.

1. On a scale of your choosing, in a medium of your choosing, arrange, rearrange, juxtapose, invent. This painting must present that which cannot be seen together.

Note: As with all of these exercises, ensure that you explore methods of application, (which include brush size), the possibilities of mediums, surfaces and supports.

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Materials and process.

This exercise started with an old painting and no plan. This is where it all fell down, in my opinion.

It is great to have a plan; sometimes, deviating from that plan makes exciting results. Sometimes the results are not great and disappointing. This was the case here.

• Old used canvas 42 cm x 60 cm (from a previous course) of Venice.

• Crackle paste

• Magazine cuttings

• Acrylic paint

• Acrylic marker pen

• Fineliner

• Ink

• Various synthetic brushes

Overpainted result. Venice with an ice mountain and a large-scale lady lying in the water/canal.

The crackle paste emulates the ice, and the bright white buildings reflect the ice mountain in Venice. The addition of a lady floating in the water, which you would never do in Venice because the city itself contaminates the water, so it's polluted, full of heavy metals and all kinds of chemicals from industrial activity and shipping. Oh, and it’s prohibited.

I hated the result. What could I do to make it more interesting?

Filtering and cropping? I prefer these images. They seem more contemporary.

I feel that the piece below is the best of a bad bunch because it evokes a more 'dreamy pop art' atmosphere (if that makes sense?). The colours clash and don't sit together. The composition leads you to the horizon, but I still think it's a weak outcome because of the lack of planning.

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