Art Sync: A Considered Beauty - Conversation with Ann Lofquist - Viewing Room

Tazewell Sycamore, 9″ x 9″, Oil On Panel

Elizabeth Johnson: In your interview with Larry Groff from Painting Perceptions, you mention,

"I think many of us have had the experience of a stab of joy and longing while looking at nature; I certainly have and I'm trying to recapture those moments in my paintings. I've found over the years that I unconsciously gravitate towards certain subjects: a certain scale of space (not too vast) which I think is accessible to the human scale. I am also attracted to a landscape which has been shaped by human presence. Over and over again I'm moved to paint old trees, roads, streams, tracks in the fields or in the snow, and erosion. Many of these subjects are evocations of the passage of time, and I suspect that's why they move me."

Does the growing urgency of climate change and pollution or the sense that time might be running out for humans affect your recent work? For example, in the interview you mention what sounds like a fruitful battle with painting urban sprawl in Southern California.

Wet October, 28″ x 54″, Oil On Canvas

Ann Lofquist: Change in its many forms is an inescapable theme for most landscape painters. My favorite subjects often include streams with eroding banks, tracks through the soil and snow, and the margins between seasons, all useful metaphors for the passage of time. I can’t say that climate change and/or pollution are important themes in my work, and I don’t intend for my paintings to suggest a dire future for humanity.

However, the disappearance of small farms in New England is having a direct effect on my work, as old pastures are reverting into woods and streams are increasingly choked with invasive non-native species such as Japanese knotweed. I find I am having to work harder and drive farther to find the type of landscape I love.

Swoope, March, 8″ x 20″, Oil On Panel

Ashfield Oak, 24″ x 36.5″, Oil On Canvas

EJ: I grew up in rural Pennsylvania, near Gettysburg, and I remember dreaming of flying over the earth and zapping houses to make them disappear, since I wanted land to be empty and pristine. We practically got hysterical when the county cut some big trees down along our dirt road. How did you feel about nature as a child? Was it a refuge, a classroom, a mystery?

AL: When I was growing up, I had plenty of friends, but I always found solace in being alone in nature. I suppose that I am old enough to have grown up in an era when a child could run off into the woods for an afternoon alone without fear or reproach from parents. (My sister was the “indoor” child who was a talented musician and spent her hours practicing the piano.) But my time in the woods along the Potomac was something I didn’t particularly want to share with my friends.

Last Oak Turning, 8″ x 18″, Oil On Panel

AL: I was constantly inventing narratives set in the landscape––and I was of course the protagonist––and I wanted to keep this private. Also, the only times I ever remember being bored as a child were when I was trapped indoors.

Many other artists I have known are also loners in the sense that we are comfortable with and even desirous of long hours of solitude. My painting process is not collaborative. My studio is a refuge. This doesn’t mean I’m antisocial, but my most important work is done in isolation, and I am happy in that.

EJ: In the interview you mention the DeLorme Company’s topography and vegetation prints: how do these inform your plein air and studio work? Do you study up on local species of plants, animals, and birds?

AL: It is important to me to have a knowledge of a place if I am going to paint it extensively. By “knowledge” I mean an intimate familiarity with the flora and fauna, the texture of the soil, the weather and seasonal changes, etc. While I often improvise and invent when working on large studio paintings, I also strive for accuracy and consistency in the depiction.

A longtime friend who is a botanist once told me she could identify almost all the trees and grasses in my work, even though they were mostly just dabs of color. That pleased me immensely!

Lowville, October, 7.75″ x 22″, Oil On Panel

Bray Road I, 7.5″ x 16″, Oil On Panel

EJ: Talking with Larry Groff about your then recent move to the West Coast, you say, "It's important to me to paint the surroundings of my current life. (Friends have encouraged me to take a trip back East to do some plein airs and do some more New England studio paintings, but that just wouldn't feel ‘honest’ to me)." Why is it important to paint where you live now? Does living in and seizing the immediate moment better make, as you say, "that sentiment (the stab of joyous longing) durable”? Does memory or nostalgia play a lesser role for you?

Big Sycamore, 40″ x 56″, Oil On Canvas

AL: After my mother’s death in 2018, I was free to leave California and move back to New England, and I specifically chose an area with a landscape I wanted to paint. This is certainly related to my need for a “knowledge” of my subject.

I have also done several paintings based on landscapes in the Shenandoah, where there are still more active farms than in New England. (I have been known to drive nine hours just to paint a specific pasture stream!) I grew up in Maryland, alongside the Potomac River, and my family also had some land in Luray, Virginia. Perhaps this is the most intimate kind of knowledge–– the kind acquired in childhood.

My love of sycamore trees certainly harkens back to childhood memories.

Sinking Creek, 7″ x 14″, Oil On Panel

EJ: I love the impact of your sketchbook images with your handwriting. And I get the balance between working outside to receive nature and in the studio to invent one's own world. Is keeping a diaristic backdrop the pivot between the two? Are you ever tempted to pair passages of writing with images on canvas or in a book?

AL: My sketch journals are important artifacts in my life. At one point they were truly illustrated diaries with much personal content; however, as I enjoy sharing them with others, I now keep the text “suitable for public consumption,” mostly recording the circumstances and challenges of making the accompanying paintings. (Rather bland but less embarrassing.)

Randolph, 7″ x 16″, Oil On Panel

AL: I am not inclined to include text in my oil paintings, for several reasons. Perhaps the most important is that I don’t have anything to say with language that could enhance the emotional narrative of the painting; I suspect it would detract. The subjective interpretation of language is a can of worms I am not eager to open.

EJ: I enjoyed your 2020 discussion of True to Nature: Open-Air Painting in Europe, 1780–1870 with Mary Morton at the National Gallery...

Pembroke, 7″ x 17″, Oil On Panel

EJ: ...Relating eighteenth and nineteenth century painters as peers, you say it isn’t enough only to do plein air oil sketches, even though they sometimes end up being more dynamic than larger, constructed studio versions of the same scene. Also, in the Groff interview, you mention sanding back. Do you scrape or rag off large areas of paint to keep canvases dynamic?

AL: My painting process usually involves doing on-site plein air studies, and then reworking the most promising ones into larger canvases in the studio.

AL: When working on-site, I aim for fidelity to my subject: the aim is to get an accurate sense of the experience of a particular day, not to produce a formally resolved piece. My plein airs are “one-shot” affairs. While I like to return to favorite sites, each day is different.

Bright March, 24″ x 64″, Oil On Canvas

Bray Road III, 7.5″ x 17″, Oil On Panel

AL: In the studio, I try to reinvent the experience but also alter and improvise. However, I consider a large painting “adrift” and courting failure if it loses the original emotional inspiration depicted in the plein air.

Quickly painted, spontaneous pieces have an appealing freshness very difficult to reproduce in studio work. The concentration required to complete a two-hour painting of a constantly changing landscape can be an almost out-of-body experience and this intensity often strengthens the studies.

Bray Road II, 12″ x 18″, Oil On Panel

AL: In contrast, the studio paintings develop slowly, through much trial and error, over many weeks. I hope there is another kind of meaning in something more considered and resolved, perhaps a more mature rather than youthful beauty.

EJ: Mary Morton brings up Cézanne as an example of the late Impressionist need to bring the mind and ego into landscape. You contrast the "detachment" of recording in plein air with "elevating the landscape" in larger, composed studio paintings. How does the "stab of joy” participate in generating ideas for large scale compositions?

Bray Road I, 7.5″ x 16″, Oil On Panel

AL: When I chose a subject for a plein air, I am responding to an immediate connection with a certain landscape at a certain time of day at a certain season. And by some mysterious alchemy my heart leaps. This stab of joy includes an element of longing and eventual loss that makes it more poignant: a realization of the universal truth “This too shall pass.”

As I said earlier, for me the act of painting from nature is intuitive. Instead of bringing expectations of what I want to see, I try to be receptive to what is. The studio work is much more empirical, and I feel more like an architect than an observer.

EJ: In the Groff interview, you mention that you painted abstractly in college. Are there modern or postmodern artists that you draw inspiration from? Say, for instance, when you are abstracting from nature, are there contemporary pieces of art that come to mind?

Dublin, 6″ x 17.5″, Oil On Panel

AL: I attended art school in the 1980s. Above all else, I was preoccupied with doing work that looked original and “new” and was constantly looking at the work of contemporaries, not only for inspiration but to be sure I wasn’t being scooped by someone else! Because the primary inspiration for my painting was other art, the work I produced was unintentionally derivative— the opposite of what I was striving for.

October Oaks, 8.5″ x 17.5″, Oil On Panel

AL: After college and before going to grad school for a MFA, I worked a secretarial job during the day and painted at home at night. This artistic isolation served to quiet all the voices and influences that had distracted me at art school. I had to find what I truly loved and not paint to others’ expectations. This led me to the landscape.

I would never recommend that young artists ignore the history of painting and of the work of their contemporaries. However, as I approach sixty, I find I am looking less to other paintings, historical or otherwise, for inspiration. Rather, I try to apply that time and energy to studying nature.

EJ: I love hearing that there is preparation before painting a sunset, and that you have only about fifteen minutes to execute before it’s all over. Do you snap a photo during those fifteen minutes, in case you need to finish the painting later in the studio? Or generally do you prefer to return the next day? You mention in the National Gallery interview that artists who were painting ocean waves in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries didn't have photography to help them figure out the wave shapes. Today scientists are exploring planets with rovers, stars and space with the Hubble Telescope. How might current advancements that sharpen our understanding of the cosmos resonate with your commitment to studying and depicting nature?

AL: In this digital age, painting with oils may be seen as anachronistic, but I feel that the continued existence of objects that are individually crafted and physically real are more valuable. Oil paint on canvas is an established form that works like guitar/rhythm guitar/bass/drums in a band, and I am happy to work within the form rather than to invent a new one.

I certainly use a camera to get information into the studio (always a challenge for landscape painters). I like to take photos while I am working on a plein air, as they can provide details that are not captured in the sketches. However, when I try to paint studio canvases directly from photos without doing plein air studies, I find the paintings almost always fail. (And believe me I have tried!) Once again, I think it goes back to knowledge of the subject: the photos provide visual data but lack the intense experience of observation.

Round Barn, Sharon VT, 6.75" x 18", Oil On Panel

AL: I am usually the last person to use a new technology. My nephew, a painting major at Boston University, uses a tablet to digitally work out compositions that he then reinvents as oil paintings. This is something I imagine could be a very useful tool, but one I have yet to exploit.

What I find interesting about the Hubble photos of the cosmos, aside from their beauty, is that they don’t represent what we could see with human eyes. Rather, elements that are off the human visible spectrum, like infrared and ultraviolet light, are visually interpreted and subjectively colorized. Some people call this deceptive, and they might have a point. But I look at the photos as art, which often is the result when we try to communicate something invisible through visual media.

When it comes to process, I consider myself a Machiavellian. If the result is a good painting, any use––or rejection of–– technology is justified.

––Elizabeth Johnson
(elizabethjohnsonart.com)

edited by Matthew Crain
(@sarcastapics)

February 2024

View Ann Lofquist: Passing Observations Here

Ann Lofquist, Courtesy of the National Gallery of Art

February 8 - March 2

Lofquist received her BFA from Washington University in Saint Louis and her MFA from Indiana University. Her work has been shown across the country in galleries in Philadelphia, New York City, San Francisco, Los Angeles, and Portland, ME. She has had solo exhibitions in Santa Monica, CA; New York, NY; San Francisco, CA and more. Her work is in many public collections including the Arnot Art Museum in Almira, NY; Bowdoin College Museum of Art, Brunswick, ME; Long Beach Museum of Art, Long Beach, CA and PECO Philadelphia. Lofquist currently resides in western Massachusetts.