Drawing: the landscape of memory

Drawing: the landscape of memory Stephen Mallick

An exploration of the link between drawing and painting. Between landscape drawings – executed en plein air – and painting the landscape in the studio with drawings as an inspiration and a guide – an artistic ‘mnemonic’.

Drawing needs only a bit of charcoal, paper, and a rough support. It is ideally suited to working out of doors. Painting less so. But landscape painting in the studio risks the loss of immediacy. In the face of the landscape there is wind, heat, cold, changing light and the race against time. Using drawing created in the landscape as a mnemonic to the act of studio painting provides a powerful tool to recapture and express again what it felt like to be there. To communicate what it felt like to be there remains at the core of the artist’s desire.