Why paint landscapes?

Art is a vast and complex subject with a rich and colourful history. It’s something I find utterly fascinating and compelling. There’s nothing more exciting than appreciating someone’s creative work and trying to gain some sort of meaning from it.

In my career as an artist, I’ve mainly focused on landscape painting. While it’s certainly a very popular genre of art, there are plenty of other areas of art I could have specialised in. I could have focused on pottery, photography or even abstract painting, for example. So why do I paint landscapes? Why is this the area I’ve come to specialise in?

People who know me know I had quite a nomadic childhood. Instead of spending my childhood rooted in one place, I spent mine travelling throughout Europe, living in different places and gaining valuable experiences from different countries. Though I’ve since settled down, I think those childhood travels instilled a love of nature in me. I loved seeing scenic landscapes, each one different from the last. Appreciating the natural beauty of the world around me was something I loved doing from a young age and it’s always stayed with me.

Even to this day I still love nothing more than going for a drive and appreciating the beautiful landscapes around me. One of my favourite hobbies is going for drives and doing a bit of plein air painting to capture some of the beautiful scenery I see in a painting.

So that’s why I paint landscapes. If my childhood had been different, I don’t know what I would be doing now in terms of art. I might not even be interested in art! Looking back, I’m glad I have the same appreciation for the natural world that I did during my childhood. I’m very fond of my childhood and I’m very glad my love of the natural world has always stayed with me and has become a key part of who I am and what I do. Being a landscape painter is what I was always meant to do.

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