How Does Landscape Art Contain Emotion? | NZ Fine Prints

How Does Landscape Art Contain Emotion?

If you’ve ever looked at landscape art you might have wondered what the artist was trying to capture. As with most art, understanding an artist’s intention can require some time. Look long enough at a landscape painting, and you might be able to feel the emotions that the painter was trying to capture! Landscapes make popular art prints for their ability to evoke emotions. In today’s blog post, we’re exploring which techniques artists use to create evocative landscapes.

 

The history of landscapes

The most famous landscape artists are usually associated with the Romanticism movement in art. There’s a whole range of styles within romantic landscape paintings, from peaceful, pastoral visions of nature, to awe-inspiring visions of mountains and storms. A lot of romantic landscapes were used to comment on religious or philosophical ideas, but it was in this movement that the association between landscapes and emotion was forged. This association more or less still exists today; we still expect contemporary landscape art to evoke emotions when we look at it. In many ways, the Romanticists set the blueprint for the common techniques used in landscapes, especially in regard to capturing certain emotions. Below, we’re going to look at three.

 

1. Colour

The colours chosen by an artist can have a huge impact on the effect it will produce for the audience. One of the most famous landscape painters, Joseph Mallord William Turner (usually just called Willian Turner), was a master at using colour in landscapes. In fact, Turner was a key reason that landscape paintings became popular in the first place. Turner painted both sunsets and sunrises over Venice multiple times in his life, and in all these paintings the colours aren’t necessarily realistic. Often, he painted scenes like this with a reduced palette. All the bright colours are used to depict the rising or setting sun, and the rest of the image is grey or yellow, almost unfinished looking. This forces the eye to focus on the sun, just like how a real sunset or sunrise captures your attention; everything else around you seems to fade away. A lot of early landscapes also used warm colours to create feelings of nostalgia or comfort, especially when depicting the countryside and trying to foster a sense of kinship with the land.

 

2. Brush techniques

The brushstrokes also change the way a landscape feels. Harsh, sharp brush techniques make the bristles of the brush stand out a lot more in the paint, and this can dramatically alter the atmosphere of a piece of art. One of the most interesting things about this is that the effect can change based on the context creating a sense of grief, or chaos, or even awe. Landscape painters in particular tend to use visible brushstrokes to reinforce the power of nature.

 

3. Scale

Landscape artists often choose subjects that are overwhelmingly big, like mountains, the sea, or the sky, and all these subjects have roots in the romantic origins of landscape paintings. Romanticists were fascinated by an emotion that they called the “sublime”, and this was true of Romantic poets and writers too, not just visual artists. To the Romanticists, the sublime was best described as a feeling of being overwhelmed by the sheer scale and beauty of the world. You may have even felt this yourself, when looking up into a clear starry sky, or down at a rolling view from the top of a mountain. It’s an experience that makes you feel tiny and insignificant, but also enthralled by the beauty of the scene. For the Romanticists, it usually had an explicit connection to Christianity too; they felt they were experiencing God through the majesty of nature, so in many ways, the sublime was a spiritual experience. Quite a hard thing to attempt to capture in a painting! To try to replicate the unique mixture of powerlessness and euphoria, early landscape artists chose to paint things that were massive, and usually tried to show this to the audience by painting tiny people into the scene for scale, showing them dwarfed by the scene around them.

 

Interested in landscape art for your home?

Here at NZ Fine Prints, we have a whole collection of contemporary New Zealand landscape art, showcasing our own unique environment and its beauty. Browse our collection to find some of the best landscape canvas art prints in NZ, like Dale Gallagher’s Majestic Fiordland, and Church of the Good Shepherd Lake Tekapo. Landscape prints can bring true character to your home or office and make a great way to celebrate the stunning environment here in Aotearoa. To find out more, feel free to contact us today!

Christchurch Artist Hamish Allan's New Prints

ChCh Artist Hamish Allan

"Santa Barbara" - 500 x 500mm Art Print $64.95

Leaving out unnecessary imagery creates a sense of space and
serenity in the artwork of Christchurch painter Hamish Allan.   Composing a scene that is stripped back to the essential image means not making an exact copy of messy reality from a particular viewpoint. Because of this these new prints in stock here at NZ Fine Prints Christchurch Prints collection are clearly Canterbury landscapes and buildings but also distill from them a sense of place that is more of distillation of essential New Zealandness.

Allan's prints are contemporary artworks that give a sense of place with an accessible hook to draw the viewer in, Allan's love of classic cars and buildings viewed, as he says, "through rose tinted glasses at times gone by".   Look closer and the viewer begins to notice that Allan's paintings are also full of sly references to other things, for instance the road cone in "Santa Barbara" lets us know that this painting is post-earthquake.  We also enjoy the way Hamish pays tribute to famous NZ artists - for instance by hanging Don Binney's "Pacific Frigate Bird" print from the Barry Lett Gallery multiples on the wall of the upstairs room in "Blue HQ".  There are now over 20 Hamish Allan prints available, on both fine art paper and canvas.

Postage stamps to wall art

"3d Huia" Stamp
- prints now available

Designers of historical NZ stamps are from the era of "craftsman printmakers" who until recently were routinely dismissed or ignored by art historians who saw printmaking becoming respectable as a fine art form only when painters of fine art began to dabble in it after 1950. A series of historical NZ stamp designs have been released this month in black and white prints at wall art size, closing the circle of the trend in contemporary art for artists to reference retro postage stamp design in their paintings and prints over the past couple of years. And revisiting the designs shows clearly that early craftsman printmakers such as LC Mitchell were producing attractive and superbly composed artworks within the constraints of the commercial imperatives of the time.

New Zealand: Phantom Country
Lester Hall "Postage Stamp" series print

The conventions of (albeit much enlarged) postage stamp design have been explored recently in the work of several contemporary NZ artists (most infamously with Bay of Islands printmaker Lester Hall whose now iconic postage stamp design prints started with the Phantom series shown here). In fact the postage stamp style print has, we think, become a veritable trend (see Weston Frizzell's Four Seasons series print "Aotearoa" , the work of Jane Crisp, some of Timo's artwork etc).  But until the arrival this month of a series of prints enlarging historical NZ postage stamp designs into art prints we hadn't realised that prints of the actual stamps would work well as wall art - or that the designers of early stamps in NZ were often the very same men responsible for NZ's golden age of tourism and travel poster art.

The black and white prints of the Tui, Wahine, Tuatara from 1935 and the 8d and Huias stamp from the 1898 pictorials work remarkable well at wall art size (approximately half a metre square) and bring to light glorious examples of early NZ design that were previously only seen by stamp collectors.

The story behind the second set of "New Zealand Pictorials" issued in May 1935 began with a design competition that received over 1500 entries, the work of 11 designers was selected for the final designs.  The design competition was announced by the secretary of the Post Office department, G McNamara in the following terms (for the source of this transcript and other background information on the 1935 pictorials we gratefully acknowledge painter Mark Wooller's excellent website New Zealand Stamps.)

Designs for New Issue of Postage-Stamps

Designs are invited, in accordance with the specifications and conditions below, for a new issue of postage and revenue stamps for the Dominion of New Zealand, ranging in approximately fifteen denomonations from 1/2d. to 3s.


1. The design of each stamp must include a representation of characteristic or notable New Zealand scenery or genre, or industrial, agricultural, or pastoral scene: otherwise, the design may be of any pattern, provided the words "New Zealand Postage and Revenue" in Roman characters and the value in words, or in Arabic figures, or in figures and words, are plainly shown.


3. The design proper should be coloured, but uncoloured drawings or enlargements may accompany them. Photographs of any kind are excluded.


5. The designs are to sent under cover of a pseudonym, or a motto, accompanied by the name of the sender enclosed in a sealed envelope bearing the same assumed title outside….Each design is to be accompanied also by a concise description thereof.


6. A special board, on which there will be a representative or representatives of Art, as well as representatives of the Government Department concerned, will be set up to adjudicate on the merits of the designs submitted: and a price of 25 pounds will be paid for each design that is adopted for a stamp of the proposed series.

Print of L.C. Mitchell's 1935 stamp design

Leonard Cornwall Mitchell, who designed classic 1930s era NZ tourist and publicity posters (most readers would recognise his famous posters advertising, for example, destinations such as Mt Cook, Mt Egmont and Milford Sound) was eventually commissioned for four of the 14 stamp designs, a remarkable feat considering the number of entries and the anonymity of the submitters. One of his winning designs (for the 8d Tuatara) is pictured at left and the Maori Girl (3d Wahine), also the work of LC Mitchell, shown below right is remarkably similar to the figure depicted in his "New Zealand For Your Next Holiday" poster design from the 1920s.

Wellington's Evening Post newspaper reported on the day of the pictorials release under the headline The New Stamps: Rush to Purchase - Favourable Comments. 

3d Maori Girl
Prints released

"An unprecedented rush set in at the post offices this morning on the part of those desirous of purchasing specimens of the new pictorial stamps which were on sale for the first time today. At 8 a.m. there was a queue of buyers outside the C.P.O. [Central Post Office], and from that hour onwards sales were very brisk." Officials, readers were told, were prepared but "the lot of the vendor was hardly lightened by the ocassional incursion of the would-be wag who talked in terms of Tuataras, fantails, tuis or swordfish, rather than in terms of the more prosiac shillings and pence."  Comments from buyers such as "The stamps were far better than I thought they would be" were recorded and the article concluded that "From a New Zealander's point of view the new set is undoubtedly decidedly interesting, and it is a splendid example of the stamp-makers art".

Illustrating this article are three of the new large prints of postage stamp designs that are now in stock at NZ Fine Prints. They are really effective decoration at wall art size - historical/retro black and white NZ designs that are real, authentic visual artifacts from New Zealand's history with an impeccable design pedigree.

Weston Frizzell ask "Who are the real terrorists?"

When news of the arrest of Tuhoe activist Tame Iti under NZ's anti-terrorism laws reached Auckland pop art studio Weston Frizzell they were "really shocked, as were most people who knew Tame". There has been a long and artistically productive collaboration between the veteran Maori activist and the two artists who collaborate as Weston Frizzell, Mike Weston and Otis Frizzell.

With a series of four prints Weston and Frizzell are asking "Who are the real terrorists?". Weston says "The government were looking for a chance to flex their new draconian laws that had been created in response to US foreign policy bullying and Tame copped the full force of it."

Yeah Right

“Yeah Right” is a satirical adaptation of the popular Tui Beer advertising campaign that uses sarcasm in a humorous social commentary. In this artwork Mike Weston and Otis Frizzell present their version of Tui’s iconic ad, substituting an AK47 assault rifle for the usual perch branch. In Yeah Right, Tutu replaces both the Tui Beer branding, and also the social statement that is usually featured in the Tui beer billboard.

Dr Tutu is the name Tame Iti adopted when DJing on his various alternative radio slots. It features in the title of works Tututables, and Tututime 2004, and the logo featured on the painted canvas works exhibited. In Maori, (and most if not all Polynesian languages also) Tutu has a multiplicity of meanings such as ‘revolution’, ‘to meddle’, ‘arson’ and ‘sedition’. Tutu and the glyphic logo formed by the inverted numerals 22 (see below) have been recurring motifs in Weston Frizzell’s work since 2004. The message it conveys relates directly to the arrest of Tame Iti and other Tuhoe members under the terrorism suppression act. If it were spelled out it might read: “A terrorist revolution? Yeah, right.” Yeah Right is a fine art archival inkjet print on Hahnemule 100% cotton rag paper, edition of 180.

Pa Ke Ha Ke

“I fully support the redesign of the flag,” Otis Frizzell told Wellington's Capital Times after Iti desecrated the NZ flag with a shotgun blast before the Waitangi Tribunal in 2005. “Whether it was right or wrong [Iti] was redesigning it in his own special way. The bullet holes in this work represent what Tame did to the flag." Edition of 180 prints, handprinted then signed and numbered.

The term Pakehake contains two possible meanings. In Maori the addition of the suffix ke transforms Pakeha into an expletive, a curse , an insult. Additionally Pake means flag and Hake means torn, thus the title ‘Torn Flag’. Pa Ke Ha Ke is Weston Frizzell's new version of the New Zealand ensign complete with bullet holes.

Dr Tutu feat. Tame Iti

The print "Dr Tutu featuring Tame Iti" is a combined image of four paintings from the 2004 exhibition at Mike Weston's "The Area" gallery. From left to right Whenua, Aotearoa Not for Sale, Horimoni and Tututime. Weston and Frizzell conceived an imaginary contemporary scenario where no colonisation had occurred and devised a number of graphic motifs and symbols such as you might find on road markings or signs or perhaps corporate branding responding to this notion.

Mike takes up the story "I was approached by an American couple who wanted to record a spoken word project with Tame. I made four pieces for an art / CD package. I figured it wasn’t going to be a big seller but had some potential to go the distance if it was leaned more in an art direction so I started jamming ideas for a special package CD which ultimately ended up being an art exhibition concept, with a CD attached to each artwork." Mike continues "I had an idea of illustrating Tame’s face in the style of the 4 square man, in a nod to Dick Frizzell's Grocer with Moko, so I called my good mate Otis Frizzell, who I’d been managing on and off for a few years, to do the illustration of that and he nailed it so well that I asked Otis to collaborate on the art side of it 50:50 with me. We found ourselves enthusiastically throwing paint around all over the place, jamming a lot of ideas, running them past Tame to make sure he was alright with it, and mostly he was and we made four series of canvasses each in editions of 22, presenting visual representations of each of the musical works [also available for download at Amplifier] on the CD."

The first time Otis had met the Tuhoe Maori activist was back in the 1990s. Frizzell had become friends with a group of hip hop artists, including DLT and Che-Fu during the time Frizzell was performing as half of hip hop duo MC OJ and the Rhythm Slave. DLT and Che-Fu would take international artists to a Marae on Tuhoe land, in the eastern North Island for what Otis describes as “a taste of true Maoriness - we’d give them a dose of old school Maori – it is pretty awesome to be a European and be invited in there.”

The translation of the Dr Tutu persona into visual forms such as the inverted "22" came about as Weston was using the "I Ching regularly as a kind of metaphysical guide and mirror during this time". Weston repeatedly found himself at "the 22nd hexagram passage, Pi (or Grace). The sentiment expressed in the Wilhelm translation “things should not unite abruptly or ruthlessly” seemed to fit the bicultural nature of the musical collaboration very well, and the coincident 22, resonated with the Dr Tutu name of the project. Of course there’s the additional Catch 22 reference. It stuck." Weston also says, "I noticed that the number 22 revolved 180 degrees created a glyphic logo that evoked a double Manaia, a Maori influenced Hindu Arabic form that in an abstract sense embodied many of the ideas of bicultural collaboration we were working with."

Frizzell and Weston started putting that symbol on artworks that spoke of those issues - beginning with the 88 canvasses in the Dr Tutu show. The inverted 22 also appears on prints outside of the series of works discussed in this article, such as Behave and Four Seasons Winter. Says Weston "I figured it would stick in peoples' minds because they would be wondering why it was upside down".

Give it Back

The full line up of the "We are" letter paintings were prepared to show at Auckland's "Original Art Show" in 2010 when Weston Frizzell were the featured artist guests. In "Give it Back" the letters are arranged to spell the word "Urewera". This print is available in a tiny edition of just, you guessed it, 22 - the message regarding Tuhoe's land in the Urewera is to "Give it Back".

It is significant that Otis Frizzell's collaboration on the Dr Tutu project with Mike Weston established the new working relationship that evolved into the now high profile Weston Frizzell pop art brand.

Art doesn't happen in a socio-political vacuum, our visual culture is shaped by and responds to current events. We hope the art buying public will show their support for artists such as Weston and Frizzell who are responding thoughtfully and creatively to current events in Aotearoa/New Zealand by purchasing prints from the Weston Frizzell series of contemporary editions.

Seraphine Pick Art Prints

New in stock at www.prints.co.nz this morning are prints from important contemporary New Zealand painter Seraphine Pick. The artist has said about her art, "My imagery is quite weird anyway, but I wanted to convey an uneasiness." According to one reviewer Pick "has haunted the New Zealand art world with a constantly changing stream of emotionally charged paintings for more than a decade." [TVNZ] Her subjects are often faces, figures or domestic objects, alone or in surprising collage, sometimes fragmented as if strained by memory. (We had trouble catergorising them - in the end we have put Seraphine's prints in the surreal prints gallery.)

Pick was born in Kawakawa, Bay of Islands, Northland and graduated with a Bachelor of Fine Arts in painting from Ilam School of Fine Arts, University of Canterbury in 1988. In 1994 she was the recipient of the Olivia Spencer Bower Foundation Art Award, and in 1995 she was the Rita Angus Artist in Residence in Wellington. Her art is held in the majority of public art collections in New Zealand including Te Papa Tongarewa: Museum of New Zealand, McDougall Art Gallery, Christchurch, Dunedin Public Art Gallery, Govett Brewster Art Gallery, New Plymouth, Chartwell Trust Collection, Auckland and the Fletcher Challenge Collection.

These are the first two prints to be made of Seraphine Pick's artwork - the paintings that have been reproduced are a 1995 work called "High Rise" and a slighter later work called "Room" (see picture above). Both are extremely high quality prints - both editions have been personally checked and approved by the artist before being released for sale this morning. [Artist Photograph Credit: HB Today].

Tony Ogle Prints

Tony Ogle is one of New Zealand's most popular contemporary printmakers. In his original prints Ogle shares his love of natural New Zealand - his view coloured by a childhood spent near the sea at Castor Bay on Auckland's North Shore where his enthusiasm for surfing and sailing developed. We are delighted to show Tony's new "Surf series" prints for the first time. There are more prints in this series plus all Tony's other prints here.

Liam Barr releases giclee prints

Liam Barr has already had three solo exhibitions at prestigious New Zealand commercial galleries and his paintings have also appeared in public exhibitions - "Tears For Tane's Children" at the Whangarei Art Museum and 'Mind Games, An Exhibition of Surrealism in Aotearoa' at Hastings City Art Gallery. Barr has produced very small run limited edition giclee prints of the original paintings which are now available through New Zealand Fine Prints.

Woodcut prints by Annie Smits Sandano

New in stock are contemporary woodcut prints by Annie Smits Sandano.