THE LANDSCAPE AND MY PERSONAL INTERPRETATION

Jordi Rodríguez-Amat

Landscape is one of the themes in which my work as a painter has developed. Today I present it to you in all its possible manifestations: natural, rural, urban, etc.

From the origins as a young man my landscapes were just the simple interpretation of my visual perceptions. Later, I interpreted it in many other forms, even reaching at certain moments the pure abstraction of perceptions. You can see in this page the characteristics of each of the sensitive moments in which my work has moved within this thematic space.

This work has the same characteristics as the first one. Painted a couple of years after the other one, you can already see some changes, especially in the brushstrokes. Here the color is flat and the realisme of other previous works is no considered.

Sant Jeroni de la Murtra is a monastery located on the border between Santa Coloma de Gramenet and Badalona. It’s one of the places I used to go painting during those years. It was a time when I was interested in light effects and atmospheric transparencies, which were perceived and interpreted with all their effects and chromatic nuances with free brushstrokes.

Here it is already seen that these effects predominated over the details, which would have distorted the chromatic and luminous values I was looking for at the time of painting this picture.

This painting was painted in 1963, at the age of eighteen, in the Ciutadella park in Barcelona, during the landscape class of the Fine Arts School.

As a young painter with a desire to know, I analyzed and studied the Impressionist painters, my favorite painters at the time. Once I finished my studies in the Fine Arts School, a long stay of 3 months in Paris made me radically change my aesthetic principles and my work followed new guidelines.

The teacher, Josep Puigdengoles, despite being a realistic painter, seeing this painting told me: you will be a great landscape painter. The good man could not foresee that, subsequently, my painting would follow entirely different paths.

 

Ibiza, the triumph of light, the triumph of the Mediterranean

Between February and July 1965 I was living in Ibiza. After a first stay in Paris, in the autumn of the previous year, where I was able to study directly the great Impressionist painters, I painted this painting as soon as I arrived in Ibiza. This work still shows characteristics similar to the previous ones with the representation according to the visual perceptions with strong but impressionistic influences. The chromatic nuances and the free brushstrokes are characteristic of this picture. Clicking the eyes a little you can perceive much better the strong luminosity that I put into the work.

1965 / Ibiza / Oil on canvas

The later works, in which the essence of the landscape is manifested exclusively by the chromatic relations, already show a clear tendency towards the most absolute abstraction.

Sometimes the landscape has been transformed into an abstract work. The work is freed from the figurative image and values, shapes and colors, among many others. This work, considered abstract, has been created from a landscape. Freed from the representative image, it limits its values to shapes and colors with all its contents.

I must say that I understand the landscape in all its breadth. Architectural representation is part of the landscape. I usually carry paper and utensils such as pen and Chinese ink. Here you can see me in Cape Sounio (Greece) drawing the columns of the temple of Poseidon. I made this drawing during a long trip to Greece in 2002. If you want to read my impressions of this trip, click on the following link: http://www.rodriguez-amat.cat/grecia-en.html

 

Photography is the art and technique that allows images to be obtained and stored permanently. Different are the photo series I have taken throughout my creative career. I have used the camera, especially the digital one, to get plastic works, considering all the value that any other tool available to the creator can allow. These two photographs are part of a series made in India. The series is not limited to the landscape, but I have chosen these two, one, natural landscape (desert), the other urban landscape.

Although the series is not limited to the landscape, if you want to see it follow this link:

http://www.rodriguez-amat.cat/indiaen-fm.html

THE FIG TREE 2018

For days I passed by a place and saw a fig tree. The fig tree is also an ancestral, primitive tree with extraordinary beauty. One day I felt the need to transform that image into plastic forms. It was not the color, but the formal essence of the tree that impressed me. In order to carry out the works, an analysis of the form was necessary, followed by a simplification and stylization at the same time.

The work process was as follows: once the image of the tree was perceived, I translated it with charcoal and quick strokes, in order to maintain the spontaneity of the general lines of the tree. Then, with black fat pencil, I worked very carefully on the different lines that make up the shapes of the tree, looking at all times for the essence and spirit of the fig tree.

L’Escala. The way of Empúries. The way of the Dunes 2019

One fine spring day, while walking along the path of the dunes, I perceived some images that I then mentally translated into graphic forms. The next day and the days after, I went back to the same place and caught those shapes and many others along the way. The leitmotif of all these works is a small set of trees and a fence that follows the entire path. The fence and trees have been stylized while treating the shapes of the trunk with a little foliage. The fences, without representing their entire route, are limited to being another plastic element within each of the drawings. All drawings have been made in Chinese ink on paper.

2019 / Chinese ink on paper

 

2019 / Chinese ink on paper

 

If you want to see all the drawings in The Dunes series, click on the following link:

http://www.rodriguez-amat.cat/cami-en.html

 

Photography is a tool that allows the artist to capture his visual perceptions by capturing through the camera. I have never tried to capture the photography that we can call tourist, on the contrary, the photography with purely plastic values.

You can see several photo series on my website, but these two photographs here are just part of the series called Paris, 2019. I have considered values such as chromatic, composition, light, contrast, perpective,etc.

By looking at these photographs, you don't just look at the images anecdotally, but try to analyze the values I captured from my perceptions.

To take a photograph, you don't have to go very far, you have just to analyze the values that make it up; shapes, perspective, volumes, lights and shadows, among many other values. It must be said that the same point of view can vary completely depending on the time of day and the lights. It is necessary to analyze the elements involved and before shooting, obviously, wait for the best moment.

Photography allows a work of art to be made and must be used with knowledge. The artist's gaze determines the photograph. The tool allows you to capture what the artist is contemplating. Needless to say, you need to know how to use the tool to the best of your ability to use it correctly.

I took this set of photographs digitally by capturing the images with a sensor which converts the light that, digitized, is stored. I later worked them on the computer with a program that allowed me to manipulate the images.