Blog/News

Environmental Influence

Mountain Splendor

16X20" Oil

If you had grown up, say, in the southwest, would you be a different painter? I'm not asking whether your subjects would differ. I'm asking how your environment has influenced you.

  Sidney Oliver

I can almost guarantee I would be a different painter if I had grown up in the southwest or anywhere with a different environment than where I was raised. I don't know how different or where I would have differed, but I'm sure growing up looking at those ancient, proud Smoky Mountains filled with lush vegetation instilled in me a love of mountain greenery that I couldn't get out west. It took me decades to get a real feel for painting landscapes in the three states in which I've lived and I don't think I have enough time left to get a good feel for painting scenery in the southwest, but then again, who knows?

Mountain Splendor, the painting above, would not have been possible if I had not grown up near the Smokies in Tennessee and lived at an elevation of 4,000 feet in the Blue Ridge Mountains in North Carolina even though the painting is of one of the foothills seen from my backyard in Virginia.

Because I grew up in a watercolor town, I was able to become immersed in the medium. Working in watercolor became second nature to me and I find myself applying many watercolor techniques to oils just because it feels right. If I had grown up in Taos, for example, I would have achieved another set of skills, but perhaps not these same, exact ones.

Ben Venue Barn

11X14" Oil

Looking back to the seventies and much of the eighties in Knoxville, TN, barns were considered so trite that we all stayed away from painting them. Occasionally, we would paint one, but not often. Even though my first love was in painting European buildings, a barn was a building and I really wanted to be free to paint as many as I wanted. I was held back by the eye-rolling perception of just one more hackneyed barn.

I moved to the mountains of North Carolina in 1987 and I found a different world in painting tastes. The area was more of a resort area and, Glory Be!, barns were in demand. I can't say that I painted every barn I came across or that I was known as a barn painter, but I felt no restraint in choosing to paint one. The area of Virginia in which I live is no different. Painting barns is not considered cliched.

Old Door

20X30" Watercolor

I've always been drawn to rural areas in the US and abroad. I don't know London well at all, but I feel I've been on every back road in certain areas of England. The same could have been said of certain bucolic areas of Switzerland back in the seventies. I am intrigued by rural life and painting rural life. 

Across Tiger Valley

11X14" Oil

If I had been raised in New York City, perhaps I would be painting fire escapes, sides of buildings using a lot of texture, taxi cabs, bright lights, or the semblance thereof via abstracts. Perhaps my paintings would be all white or all black. Perhaps I would be forging metal sculptures. We are all a product of our environment and I am no exception.

Sid, in your question you said that you weren't asking about subject matter, which is about all that I have discussed as it's difficult to separate subject matter from the way I paint. What I'm painting dictates my painting technique.

I assume painting styles have something to do with one's environment or those with whom one has come into contact.

For instance, a student comes into contact with many teachers. I never could understand why some art students strived to paint just like their art teachers. Learn from them and then branch out on your own. Copying someone means that, at best, you can be a distant second.

You need to draw out what is inside you, not mimic what you think is inside your instructor.

One's environment also can mean the times in which we live and not just our physical locations. Now combine the times in which we live with our physical and cultural environments and you have multiple factors influencing one's painting style as well as how one looks at the entire concept of painting. 

• Example #1: While visiting Fredericksburg, VA one day, my friend and I were looking for options of places to visit. Gari Melchers, a quite lovely painter and immigrant from Germany, was mentioned as having a house and studio worth visiting. I had never heard of the guy and I think the only reason is that his painting is out of fashion. His dates of 1860-1932 might be the reason he stated that there is nothing more beautiful than a mother and a baby. He certainly painted plenty of them, and I don't think he had any children of his own. Now, in the present day, this type of thinking might seem more than a little hokey, but it must have been the style during that era as Knoxville had its Knaffl madonna. Photographer and son of an Austrian immigrant, Joseph Knaffl's dates (1862-1938) almost mirror Melchers' dates. Melchers' painting style is very similar to ex-pat and, perhaps, chief influencer John Singer Sargent (1856-1925) and Spanish painter Joaquin Sorolla (1863-1923)-contemporaries all with a desire to paint or photograph, as in Knaffl's case, similar subjects. Other factors, rather than location, influenced them and, I'm sure, many others to work in a comparable manner.

Close up & cropped painting by Gari Melchers

• Example #2: According to Stanley Plumly in his book, Elegy Landscapes, Constable thought of painting as a science, "emphasizing actuality over sentimentality, accuracy over generality, address over anywhere, his idea of art as science only seems to contradict the idea that painting is feeling when in fact it is the 'science' of observation and 'science' of technique that represent the hard evidence that gives truth to the emotion." Hmmm. If this is true, Sid, Constable should have answered your science question, not I.

My, oh my. That was then and now is now.
After Impressionism, Expressionism, Cubism, Surrealism, and Abstract Art, I'm not sure any painter would think like this in our era.

Porch Furniture

20X30"

Your present and past environments, your background, your hardships, your blessings, your friendships, the weather, casual encounters, unintended asides, your faith, your lack of faith, the light, the darkness, all have an impact on your painting and your life. Embrace the lot and run with the result.  

Enjoy the process!

  Ruthie Windsor-Mann

This post is part of a series of Q & As between Ruthie Windsor-Mann and Sidney Oliver. 

We invite the reader to join in with other questions in the comments section. This needs to be interactive in order to work.

All photographs are by Ruthie Windsor-Mann unless otherwise credited.

Copyright 2019 Ruthie Windsor-Mann All Rights Reserved