I've spent a bit of time in the hills recently. A trip to Snowdonia a couple of weeks ago and the Western edge of the Brecon Beacons this weekend. Below is a shot from the Snowdonia trip, a view down the Ogwen Valley.
The artist John Piper painted many scenes in Snowdonia and I had in mind his paintings whilst wandering around up there as the palette at this time of year is typical of his work. He ended up spending time there after initially being sent on an uncompleted commission to draw the interior of Manod Mawr quarry where artworks from the National Gallery were stored during the Blitz. He fell in love with the area and rented a house in the Ogwen valley during the winter months.
The light was fairly flat for me this time but Piper understood the importance of immersing yourself in the landscape and here’s two fantastic quotes for anyone trying to understand how time to fully absorb the nature of a scene is essential to interpreting it...
“Each rock laying in the grass had a positive personality: for the first time I saw bones and the structure and the lie of the mountains, living with them and climbing them as I was, lying on them in the sun and getting soaked with rain in their cloud cover and enclosed in their improbable, private rock-world in fog”
“The rocks can look grey in a leaden light, and then do not, commonly. Against mountain grass or scree, against peaty patches near tarns, on convex slopes, in dark cwms, the same kind of rock can look utterly different, and changes equally violently in colour according to the light and time of year. The rocks are often mirrors for the sky, sometimes antagonistic to the sky’s colour.”
I’ll be returning to spend more time in Snowdonia to follow Piper’s lead and hopefully get better light and more drama.