Looking still creating paintings that are clearly

Looking athis paintings they lean towards the abstract, abstracting clear details keepingthis brush strokes very visible, while still creating paintings that areclearly landscape, a defining line between land/sea and sky, its although hepaints the landscape while only concerning with colour and texture, andeverything else gets ignored. Also making sure Jackson doesn’t have fullcontrol of the paint. Pouring paint onto, he dictates how much paint goes onthe canvas and where but lets it flow around, or by flicking the paint, thiscreates a natural feel to his paintings as the paint is uncontrollable andrandom suck as nature. Resulting in his paintings not feeling forced into anatural form.  Romanticism Started withthe late 19th century being industrialized, separating humanity fromnature enforcing order and discipline.

Natural landscapes being destroyed andreplaced by large cities.  KurtJackson’s paintings have romanticism elements in the way artists in the late18th century depicted landscape. His motivation to paint the naturalenvironment is also similar too that of a romantic landscape painter, to bewith one with the natural world and celebrating natural beauty.

His view of thenatural environment is very romantic, wanting to submerge in nature and feelingat piece. His paintings of the sea often depict are dark stormy horizon such inthe way turner’s etching he’s inspired by. Other similarities with Turner ishis exaggeration of colour or his loose style. Landscape painters, confronted with the challenge of recreating the most complex intricate natural environmentsin a unique way, have mostly taken to the simpler depictions of painting slabsof indistinguishable green, viewed from a safe distance. Perhaps not because theyare simpler to depict but rather because of the strength, vitality andcomplexity of the true forest challenges the idea that our manmade civilisationis superior.

Trees areoften depicted individually exploring every detail of a tree or in paintings ofEnglish landscapes with clumps of trees gathered are shown how they have beendomesticated and simplified. Trees have become boarders for farmland or areused to ornaments gardens. they have become the peripheral in paintings, onlythere to frame around more important subject. There aren’t many forest landscape paintings thatexclusively focus on celebrating and embrace the extravagant feel of the forestfrom the inside. It is rare the way trees are depicted in romantic paintingssuch as John Constable’s piece “ the cornfield” are in a tame domesticatedarrangement, they have been placed there to surround the fields. This istypical example of how forests are often depicted in British landscape paintings, a view looking at or from but never within the forest. Constable’s reserveportrayal of the forest relates back to our cultural and social withdrawal fromnature.

by the 18th century untamed forest where seen as the oppositeof civilisation. “ in a country full ofcivilised inhabitants, the forest could not be suffered to grow. It must giveway to fields and pastures, which are more immediate use and concern to life” saidby John Morton in 1712. (Richard Mabey 104)The foresthas become a backdrop for paintings and are represented and analysed as mysteriousand unknown. Kurt Jackson from an early age has questioned this general beliefand was motivated to explore nature more in more depth and detail. “ the enjoyment, I experienced as a child wasin knowing what was happening in the bottom of the hedgerow, or what wasmigrating overhead at certain times of the year” Kurt Jackson.

(Richard Mabey105). His woodland paintings are viewed from within the forest, enclosed inentangled thicket of vegetation. His painting “ a touch of Autumn through thetrees to Okehampton castle” is very condensed and enclosed with only the glimpseof the castle through a small gap in the trees showing any sign of an end tothe thicket. Light filtering through the canopies.

Painted in dapples of paint intertwiningand overlapping conveying the interaction between light and colour. Trees tellyou time with their cyclical patterns, this painting looks like the middle ofsummer blossoming in full. This painting demonstrates natures refusal for theforest to be tamed, overgrowing and blocking out the view that was once thecastle. The painting is quite archetypical in showing the contrast of man madeand natural, symbolises the ever long standoff between culture and nature. AlthoughKurt Jackson never depicts figures into his paintings.

Jackson’s woodlandpaintings are rarely structured in the conventional way, like this painting, itdoesn’t have an obvious foreground, the only sense of distance you have is thecastle. His painting is almost without depth, feels like nothing else existapart from this forest.  Like KurtJackson I am motivated by the beauty of the natural environment, I work from myown photographs and then work from sketches of my work. I try to focus mostlyon colour and tone rather than form. I like the ambiguity of abstracted landscapes, I’ve painted with the sky in view, but I find it much more intriguing whentaken most or all of it away and only focusing on the land. The paintings havelittle depth and sense of perspective.

I also look at Jackson’s paintingtechnique, I have experimented with throwing paint, pouring and flicking thepaint.