Memories within Nature, Randy Hamilton

As long as I can remember I have loved nature and the outdoors. I have always been awestruck by the bright intense range of colors that naturally occur in nature. From the cobalt blue oceans to the bright orange of a sunset, the variation is inspiring.

In order to emulate nature I first painted wildlife and landscapes with such detail that it left nothing to the imagination and left the landscape too mechanical. They were somewhat devoid of mood and almost scientific in their approach to catalog what I saw.

Now my paintings have taken on a more ethereal presence, I try to represent a mood, a mood that evokes within the viewer a memory of a personal experience with nature. A memory where details have faded and all that is left is an indelible impression of that moment in time.

My paintings have form and color that give the hint of details and let the viewer fill in the gaps. Each time you look at one of my works you see a wave that wasn’t there before and before you can make that detail concrete, it is gone, lost back into the blur of colors.

The colors I exploit in my paintings are the same vibrant hues that Mother Nature employed to create the landscapes. Realistic colors representing what I see. The use of pure colors is how I create mood. The time of day is very important to my concept and I have chosen full daylight sun to bathe my landscapes in, the time of day when sunlight is not influencing the colors of nature. I do not use muted colors, the treatment I use is pure hues, never using black to mix in but rather create a sense of black by mixing pure colors allowing the hues to remain rich.

Not only are colors blurred into one another so are forms. The forms in the paintings are mottled and appear to blend into each other. There are no distinct edges, but rather brushstrokes of colors juxtaposed in overlapping and underlying fashion. There are details, but not the conventional type.

My brushstrokes are energetic and openly visible, I do not try to hide them but rather let them serve as a tool to imitate the details that are intentionally left vague. The brushstrokes are to serve as a metaphor for the details that exist in nature. The details are left to the viewer’s imagination, as if observing a mirage, where you think you see waves on water but aren’t sure. A viewer may feel the urge to squint to bring the shapes into focus but to no avail.

Monet and Cézanne are historic art influences that have affected my sensibility of landscape painting. Monet has shown me the colors that can exist in nature and how detailing the forms is not as important as capturing the essence of the moment. The broad strokes of pure color and the application of the paint by Cézanne play a role in inspiring the style with which I approach my art. And if I had to choose one, Monet would be my greatest influence, and more specifically his Water Lilies Series.

It is my goal to recreate nature through the analogy-vehicle of art. I want to elicit a personal memory of nature in the viewer where the details of that day have faded over time but the feeling of that slice of time is as strong as the day he or she experienced it. May it be the vacation day they spent away from the stresses of everyday life or just a fleeting instant they experienced while casually strolling through nature.