Jonathan Hollowell
Personal Statement and Working Methods.
With landscape and chiaroscuro (the interplay between light and shade) being the principal vehicles in my work, my aim is to explore painting’s ability to express feelings of emotional significance to myself and, hopefully, the viewer. Often whilst journeying somewhere by path or road, out of the blue, a scene, a view or a visual instance will present itself making my heart speed up and creating in me an overwhelming desire to immortalise that moment and to make a painting because of that experience. More often than not, this will be caused by the way light falls upon the land, the interplay of colours, tones and their juxtapositions. My paintings strive to connect the viewer with these feelings that are impossible to describe in words.
Chiaroscuro is not only an important device in my work it is also a vital emotive element in my experience of the landscape around me. The interplay between the light on a field of wheat and the cloud shadows that mask it can create strong emotional responses in me, responses which are very similar when I listen to music, especially music in a minor key. For me, there is a parallel with harmony in music and the feelings it can promote and the harmonies of form and colour in paint which I hope can express a similar level of feeling.
Topography is used as a skeleton upon which I can hang colour and form. It is not my intension to totally remove the reference of ‘place’ in my work as it helps to keep me focused and to keep the remembered feeling alive. Sometimes the landscape itself can act as a metaphor for the emotive experience of something else, love, sorrow etc.
Predominantly my work will be in oils and watercolour, often playing one medium off against another. A project may start as a watercolour and then worked up in oil paint and vice versa. Working “en plein air” is a very different experience from working in the studio, but either way is better than not painting! Rarely will a painting be completed ‘en plein air’. The following day invariably brings with it a sigh of relief or exasperation and the need to “tweak” starts to take over. Photographs, act as ‘aides memoirs” and can assist with formal elements of composition back in the studio. Over the last decade, painting in oils with knives has become my primary technique because the physical flatness of the paint produces strong and vibrant colours that can pop and sing when against other colours. Areas of canvas/board can be covered quickly and a beautiful, unifying, impasted texture can be built up; a texture that shimmers when it’s caught by the light.
If you could hear my paintings, they’d be paintings in a minor key. They are the tracks I leave behind me in my quest for the perfect painting. Hopefully, I’ll never get there.
Jon Hollowell - 2021