THE POWER OF LESS

‘Summer Shadows – Goolwa’ - 10 x 14 ” oil on linen board painted plein air. This little painting is one of my favourites. It has been greatly simplified and the result was a much more interesting scene with lots of mood.

The Power of Less (Blog by Mike Barr)

‘Clutter is one of the biggest problems when it comes to painting. I don’t mean in the studio, but on the canvas.

When we decide to paint from a reference, either in real life or from a photograph, we are often faced with too much stuff. The temptation for artists is to put down everything they see, even really amazing artists can fall short of this aspect of painting.

It can hardly be described as a temptation really. It’s more of a default action – if it’s there we must paint it. It’s not even something we say to ourselves – we just do it! I know from my own painting experience that it crops up nearly every time I pick up the brush and sometimes it is only apparent when I think I’ve finished.

This default action can be seen clearly in a lot of paintings. It manifests itself not only in clutter but in untidy clutter.  Things that are really awkward in the composition can simply be that we have copied things as they are.

As artists we have free reign in moving things about to make a better composition or changing the colour of things to make it look more harmonious. The problem, is that our subconscious-self doesn’t really believe that the artist in us has control. The symptoms are clear to see if we look out for them while we are painting.

The constant checking to see if what we have just painted corresponds to the reference is the main one. What’s worse is when our companions tell us that it doesn’t look quite the same as what we are painting from. They are just reinforcing the misconception, that we are powerless to change things around and even worse it is something to be frowned upon if we depart from what is there.

In a way, it is a form of slavery that some artists never free themselves from. It’s quite a hideous thought that an artist can be chained to a photographic reference, but it’s so common.

The antidote to all of this is to simplify what is there when we paint.

Simplification can mean a few things – like cutting down on the colour, cutting back on the amount of things that are there, cropping the scene instead of trying to do the whole lot and giving something a star-billing by toning down everything else. The result will be a painting with some power.

When we learn to simplify a scene and give it some punch it shows that we have wielded some real power as an artist.

Happy Painting’

Mike Barr