Welsh Landscape 1914

Augustus John made this “Welsh Landscape” with confident, visible brushstrokes that capture a real sense of light. Look at the way he moves the paint around. Can you imagine the artist standing in front of the mountain, trying to get all that bigness down onto the little canvas? You can almost see him wrestling with the sheer scale, deciding what to leave in and what to leave out. The ochre and brown feel like the solid earth but there are touches of bright color in the foreground. Painting, for John, must have been about finding a way to make the hugeness of nature fit into something manageable. Painters are always looking at each other, and it is like he’s in conversation with painters like Constable and Turner, but doing it his own way. That little stroke of blue in the sky, the placement of the mountain? These aren’t just copies of nature, they are feelings. And that’s what makes painting so interesting.