The fog had come in unexpectedly during the very early morning hours and I awoke to a transformed landscape. This is one of the delightful things about walking about when the weather is foggy in an area that you know and frequent – familiar locations, settings, and objects that otherwise might be considered commonplace, uninteresting or unremarkable when ordinarily thinking about choice of subjects for making art take on a new identity, becoming intriguing.
I enjoy fog for its ability to alter the perception of space and color around me, as objects can be reduced to basic shapes, values and muted color, the view occasionally punctuated here and there by diffused lights from buildings and street lamps; the landscape is simplified into changing patterns as you walk around. The experience is at different times like virtually Photoshop-ing the landscape around me in layers within which a form or its edges might be fully blurred, slightly softened or obscured, and sometimes removed with gaps occurring as landscape elements disappear altogether. This provides an opportunity to re-examine and reconsider my relationship with my environment, and see things fresh with potential subjects for future study.
Starting out heavy, the fog thinned as the day went on, gradually becoming patchy, shifting in areas and appearing almost lace-like at times. Toward the close of the day the fog slowly and uniformly began to thin and disperse but it did so in gradation beginning from the ground and moving upwards. This was the moment that I was hoping to capture.
This is a studio painting of a place I have painted at before, and is done from sketches, notes and memory. In my modest and biased opinion like many artists I feel the photo here doesn’t do justice to the actual painting, which I hope you might be able to see for yourself someday…