Throughout the World Inspired series I have largely avoided politics in the paintings. With Bosnia and Herzegovina it was hard not see to see the deep ties between their recent violent past and the rugged landscape where so much of the fighting occurred in the mid 1990's. The factions were resilient against the aggressors but many lost their lives during the conflict and then again after the conflict due to unexploded munitions and mines. This region of the world consists of rolling mountains made of old eroded rock, deep valleys, and a wide array of green-gold colours. A previous painting in the series, Albania, also shows the same mountain range on the coast of the Adriatic sea. Bosnia and Herzegovina has a small section connected to the Adriatic, otherwise it is mostly a landlocked country.
To make the painting I started with grey ochre to establish the dark shadowy sections and jagged broken landscape. I chose this approach to provide a high contrast, high tension element to the design particularly in the foreground. This created the rugged look and reflected the war torn landscape, which was accentuated with subtle washes of rose red in the hillsides. The rest of the scene is a patchwork of brown, green, and rocky greys with little yellow and magenta wildflowers strewn about. Notice how the foreground hillside on the left almost blends into the mountains in the distance, I did this in purpose to give a feeling of immersion. It was a difficult painting to do, not because of the technical challenge, but because I had read a graphic novel called War's End by Joe Sacco which depicted the people fighting in Sarajevo during the war. As I painted, the ideas and images from the graphic novel were in my mind.
World Inspired Landscapes: Bosnia and Herzegovina 5 x 11" cold press, watercolour, March 2021 (No. 2604)
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