Observations placeholder
Scott, Sir Peter - The process of inspiration in painting
Identifier
022846
Type of Spiritual Experience
Background
A description of the experience
The Eye of the Wind – Sir Peter Scott
Oil paints rather than water-colours, and large canvases rather than small . . I selected both because I wanted to escape from the preoccupation with tiny detail which had so greatly affected my early work.
I painted from memory, which is to say that I did not find it necessary to have what I was painting in front of me as I worked. In the case of flying birds this would in any case scarcely have been practicable.
I had in mind a conception of what had stirred me when I had seen it out on the marshes. The picture became a mixture between this image which I could still dimly see and the chosen subject expressed in words. By this I mean that the completed work was in part a direct visual translation of what I had seen and in part an indirect, almost, Iiterary translation of what I imagined it ought to look like.
The preponderance of one influence over the other varied from picture to picture.
There is nothing unusual in this combination. It is a formula probably used for the majority of paintings now executed. Both kinds of translation give scope for artistic individuality-in one
case it is what the artist sees, in the other what he thinks.
What he feels may shine through either or both.