Tag: landscape

Jan de Clerck

Jan de Clerck, “De vermoeide Winden (The Tired Winds)”, 1937, Oil on Canvas, Private Collection

Born in Ostend, Belgium, Jan de Clerck studied briefly with the painter Camille Payen in Brussels, but was, for the most part, self-taught. He was much influenced by the exhibitions organized by the group La Libre Esthétique, and his first paintings date from the late 1890s. Quickly gaining in confidence and ability, De Clerck first exhibited his paintings in 1905.

Jan de Clerck developed an original technique of a sort of elongated pointillism of striped brushstrokes, producing landscapes and seascapes tinged with a Symbolist aesthetic. He often worked in mixed media, dragging the paint with short vertical strokes in order to build up the surface of the picture. This individual technique De Clerck made virtually his own: much of his best work up to 1920 is painted in this way.

A period of exile from Belgium during World War I, found De Clerke painting landscapes and camouflage, taking part in local exhibitions, and befriending such artists as Frank Brangwyn. After the war, Jan de Clerck returned to Ostend where his reputation continued to grow. He experimented with new techniques, often mixing pastel and watercolour, which he called ‘aquapastel’, to create the luminous effects he sought.

Further exhibitions of De Clerck’s work in Ostend, Liège and Ghent, as well as the publication of a book of reproductions of his work in 1928, served to advance his reputation. After 1933, however, there were no major exhibitions of De Clerck’s work for almost twenty years. His output began to decline, and he began to focus mainly on seascapes, always his favourite subject.

Source: poboh

Cormac McCarthy: “The Iron Dark of the World”

Photographer Unknown, (The Iron Dark of the World)

“By early evening all the sky to the north had darkened and the spare terrain they trod had turned a neuter gray as far as the eye could see. They grouped in the road at the top of a rise and looked back. The storm front towered above them and the wind was cool on their sweating faces. They slumped bleary-eyed in their saddles and looked at one another. Shrouded in the black thunderheads the distant lightning glowed mutely like welding seen through foundry smoke. As if repairs were under way at some flawed place n the iron dark of the world.”
― Cormac McCarthy, All the Pretty Horses

Source: gaddamm-jackdaniels

The Ghost Trees

Artist Unknown, (The Ghost Trees), Computer Graphics, Gif

“Each leaf that brushed his face deepened his sadness and dread. Each leaf he passed he’d never pass again. They rode over his face like veils, already some yellow, their veins like slender bones where the sun shone through them. He had resolved himself to ride on for he could not turn back and the world that day was as lovely as any day that ever was and he was riding to his death.”
― Cormac McCarthy, Child of God

Shifting Sands

Photographer Unknown, (Shifting Sands of Time)

“The desert could not be claimed or owned–it was a piece of cloth carried by winds, never held down by stones, and given a hundred shifting names… Its caravans, those strange rambling feasts and cultures, left nothing behind, not an ember. All of us, even those with European homes and children in the distance, wished to remove the clothing of our countries. It was a place of faith. We disappeared into landscape.”
― Michael Ondaatje, The English Patient

Reblogged with many thanks to https://oznagni.tumblr.com

Abdul Mati Klarwein

Abdul Mati Klarwein, “Camouflage”, 1985-1987, Oil on Canvas

In 1948, Mati Klarwein moved to Paris where he enrolled at the Acadèmie Julian. He later studied with painter Fernand Leger, who introduced him to the art of Salvador Dalí, Buñuel, and the world of surrealism. Later in his life, he befriended Dalí, writing about his bizarre encounters with Salvador’s sexual behaviours in his book “Collected Works 1959-1975″. In Paris, Klarwein also met Viennese fantastic-realist painter Ernst Fuchs.

With Paris as his base, Mati Klarwein spent long periods of time traveling and painting portraits during summers in Saint Tropez. Together with his father, who had recently won the competition to build Israel’s Parliament, he started to build a house in the small village of Deia, Majorca, having fallen in love with the place.

Still best known for his art of the 1960s and 1970s, (featured in a vast collection of important album covers). Mati also worked more conventionally across a variety of genres including still life, landscape, and commissioned portraits. This landscape painting of the Mallorca area of Spain by Mati Klarwein, painted between 1985-1987, demonstrates the extraordinary level of detail that is a hallmark of his work.

Pripyat, Ukraine

Infra-Red Photography of Pripyat, Ukraine

Vladimir took thise photographs of Pripyat, a ghost city in the Ukraine. UNESCO included it in its list as a world heritage cities. The city was founded in February of 1970 and grew to a population fo 49,360 by the time of its evacuation on the afternoon of April 27, 1986, the day after the Chernobyl Disaster. It is considered relatively safe to visit, and several companies offer guided tours around the area.

Bill Bryson: “The Woods is One Boundless Singularity”

Photographer Unknown, The Trailer in the Pines

“There is no point in hurrying because you are not actually going anywhere. However far or long you plod, you are always in the same place: in the woods. It’s where you were yesterday, where you will be tomorrow. The woods is one boundless singularity. Every bend in the path presents a prospect indistinguishable from every other, every glimpse into the trees the same tangled mass. For all you know, your route could describe a very large, pointless circle. In a way, it would hardly matter.”

― Bill Bryson,  A Walk in the Woods