IMPRESSIONISM
‘Old Currie Street is certainly murky but it gives a real sense of time and place – the old T&G building is still going strong today!’
Impressionism- A Window to the Heart (Blog by Mike Barr)
‘There is something about impressionist paintings that can touch us like nothing else can – and it all comes down to the way we remember things.
Our memories are rarely photographic images of events, they are more than just a picture too and involve emotion. This emotional attachment to memory can also colour the picture and change it quite dramatically. Can you remember having a memory of a place, then seeing the reality and it being quite different?
This is why impressionist paintings come closer to unlocking the emotional part of our memories. Impressionism is like a dream – we recognise the place even though it is not quite the same place visually, because we can feel it emotionally as well as there being at least one visual thing that is recognisable.
A photographic depiction of a place is the record of an instant in time – our minds never stop for an instant of time as we survey a scene, what we see is generally more like a movie than a photo. It’s blurred and it would be right to say that our memory is quite impressionistic!
An impressionistic interpretation of places and things allows the mind some latitude instead of all-details-included photograph in which no work needs to be done by the viewer – It is all there to look at.
I believe this is the power of impressionism – the ability to not only connect to the viewer but to invite them in further. The ambiguous nature of things unlocks the power of the imagination and we find that the mind revels in this challenge.
Impressionism has come a long way since the 1800s, but every impressionist today stands on the shoulders of those who came before. Modern forms of impressionism can be much braver than the first examples of this genre with abstraction and expressionism sometimes playing a part, but still with recognisable form to lead us in.
This type of modern impressionism requires acute artistic vision from the artist for it to work. It can be an elusive quality and it goes against our natural tendency to paint only what it there and exactly what is there!
It’s not a formula as such but a mindset – a way of thinking. We paint implications without hard evidence, which has the marvellous effect freeing up the viewers imagination, their memories and their feelings. It really is a window to the heart.
Happy Painting.’
- Mike Barr