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!

The Benefits of Framing Your Art Prints | New Zealand Fine Prints

The Benefits of Framing Your Art Prints

Having art prints and buying art is a relaxing pastime for many New Zealanders. But when it comes to framing, it’s another decision to make whether or not to add one to your purchase. Frames can be especially beneficial to any art purchase for many different reasons. In this blog, we’ll take a look at what difference framed wall art can make!

Keep Your Art Looking Newer for Longer

One of the most significant benefits of framing wall art is that it is a sure-fire way to extensively increase a print’s longevity. We all know too well the amount of collected dust, sun damage, and general wear and tear any piece of art will come across even in the most spotless of houses! A frame will protect your art significantly by providing a barrier between the artwork and the elements.

Instead of having to carefully remove dust directly from the parchment of your print, you can easily grab the spray-and-wipe and dust off the glass and frame. In the rare case any water damage should occur in your home, you can rest assured that your frame will be a good, hearty surface to stop a general spillage or leak from causing extensive damage to your art. Even in a bright and sunny room, the glass of a frame will be an extra barrier against UV rays that can cause your print to fade. You can even look into more advanced UV glass protection if your print is positioned somewhere that gets direct sunlight.

Frames Add More Value

Not only is a frame an excellent form of protection for a piece of art, it can also add additional value to a piece. After all, a frame is a crafted adornment that can add another element of beauty, elegance and overall quality to your art piece. Italian renaissance paintings were famous not only for the art themselves, but also for the stunningly extravagant frames that they were housed in, which showed likeness to the art nouveau architecture of the time.

While most art frames today are not so nearly intricately carved or adorned, they are still a beautiful piece of contemporary design which can hold immense value. Whether they are hand-carved out of a decadent woodgrain, or a simple yet on-trend design that fits into a contemporary style, frames can hold varying values to whoever owns them.

Work It into the Home

Frames add excellent benefit to any homeowner who is particular about their interior style. Pieces of art are unique; they often don’t fit into any particular trend or design style, because they are their own entity and shouldn’t have to. This makes it trickier for people to fit them into the right spaces in their homes—what if the colours don’t match perfectly or the textures clash with the wall behind it?

For homeowners who want to own beautiful art and incorporate it into the interior style of their home at the same time, a frame is the perfect middle ground. It sets a piece of art apart from its interior surroundings, creating a barrier that allows you to choose whatever art you like, and work it into whatever style of home decor you surround it with. Often, a solid white or black frame can be perfect for this. It causes the art to live inside the frame and prevents it from clashing with the space around it.

What about Canvas Prints?

You may feel a little different about framed canvas prints. Due to their interior frame already placed on many of them during the stretching or mounting process, there may be less reason to add an external frame. While this is true, and canvas prints can work better than many other forms of art on their own, it is still good to frame your canvas prints for longevity, value, and style.

Shop Framed New Zealand Art Prints

If you’re looking for a framed art print for your home, we have the widest range of New Zealand and international art prints available online. Get a print delivered right to your doorstep, framed and all! Shop online today.