World Inspired Landscapes: Bhutan

 

Bhutan is a small country sandwiched between China and India, located at the foothills of the Himalayas. The government works hard to preserve nature and its beauty through the creation of wildlife preserves and by minimizing high impact activities like heavy industry and certain forms of tourism. It is forbidden to climb the mountains in Bhutan because of their religious and spiritual significance, for this reason the highest peak in the world that has never been climbed is found in Bhutan. I attempted to depict the lush greenery and vertical landscape in the painting, which also depicts a group of religious structures nestled atop a cliff top connected by a precarious winding footpath. As I prepared for this painting using a travel book and internet sources, I was also reading up on Bolivia the next one in the series. There were some interesting parallels between these very different countries, including their vertical landscapes and death defying heights. The other inspiration for the Bhutan painting was 19th century Japanese wood block prints. I just received a book with colour prints of Hiroshige's series called Pictures of Famous Places in the Sixty-odd Provinces, in particular print #10 you can see in the link, it was called Hōrai Temple in the Steep Mountains of Mikawa Province. I know from my visit to Japan that the locals also believe in mountain spirits and build religious structures on the mountainsides. Bhutan seems like a magical place to visit, it is mostly pristine, and has some world class hiking, but on the other hand they are very strict about tourism there for good cause, tourists can leave a big footprint on a country. The other interesting fact I learned is that Bhutan's people are among the happiest in the world. The government forgoes a traditional gross domestic product calculation, instead they make a gross domestic happiness calculation. 

9 x 12" cold press, watercolour, March 2021 (No. 2594)

World Inspired Landscapes: Benin

 

 

For each one of these paintings I do extensive research from multiple sources. In this case a children's picture book and a music CD by a Benin musician Angélique Kidjo known as Africa's premier diva according to TIME magazine. It was truly great music and spanned many genres from Jazz to traditional. As usual I poked around google maps 3D but found little inspiration there. Finally I watched a YouTube documentary called "Deadliest Roads, Benin" which, despite the name, was a well told tale of society, history, and hardship in Benin. And of course a deadly road, the narrator follows a cotton truck that barrels down narrow populated highways at top speed. Cotton is one of the main agriculture crops in Benin, the people grow, pick, process and ship cotton out to many other countries. The tragic history of Benin is that it was among the busiest slave ports where the local government sold war prisoners to slave traders, many would perish and those that survived may have well ended up on cotton plantations overseas. Knowing that cotton is the biggest cash crop in Benin, one one hand means that the people now have access to the jobs and a little wealth, but on the other hand they make very little money at it, which is shown in the YouTube documentary. 

For the painting, I started with a patchy wash of very light golden yellow, then applied the purplish shadows while wet. I filled in the caramel-browns of the earth and yellow-orange cotton truck. The design shows a deep cotton field from bottom to nearly top, and a small band of west African Savannah. Benin is also known as a refuge for lions and elephants, it is a popular tourist destination for Safaris. The cotton on the back of the truck is light and fluffy like a cloud in the sky. The top of the cotton field undulates at the horizon line as if it is a mountain. The tree in the middle is overwhelmed by the cotton crop and trying to escape, the tree is symbolic.

9 x 11" cold press, watercolour, February 2021 (No. 2528)

next up in the series... scroll down to find out!

Bhutan, then Bolivia

World Inspired Landscapes: Belarus

 I researched Belarus using a travel guide, the internet including google earth, and a book about the Chernobyl disaster. The remarkable thing was about how important the land is to the people, and the effects of Chernobyl which contaminated a huge fraction of the Belarus hinterland. One type of image seemed iconic to the region, that is, the low lying swamps and rivers that are lined with great trees. Blanketed with snow, the pastel lights are almost neon. I borrowed from Hiroshige to design this one, the print I had in mind was Meguro Drum Bridge and Sunset Hill, which featured snow covered trees, falling snow and a strangely blue river. Water does not seem to freeze in Hiroshige's world. Belarus and Japan have noting to do with one another, however the combination certainly created an interesting painting for the series. Unless I get inspired between now and midnight, this will be the last painting I do for the year!

The series is going roughly in alphabetical order, so Belize, Benin, and Bhutan would be the next three. 

World Inspired Landscapes: Belarus 4 x 6" cold press watercolour, December 2020 (No. 2504)

Benny Cultural Center, Blues Harmony

 

I picked up a book on Bhutan today at the library, which is located in the NDG cultural center. They opened up part of it, and even had an art display in their community gallery. The art was an installation of silhouettes depicting people and animals, and the silhouettes were made from images of nature, outer space, maps, people, animals. It was quite a feast for the eyes and I realized how deprived of outside stimulus we have become. I made a painting on the way back, I found this scene at the back of the center, a large tree was casting a shadow on the periwinkle coloured wall (that is an actual colour name for 'powder blue') Considering my recent difficulties with painting blue, this location was kind of like a midterm exam. It was a matter of judgement, timing, and patience to get everything down, luckily there was a strong sun that dried the paint as I went. There were no adjustments at home, this is all on location. I am trying my best to finish the whole painting on location but the weather and conditions have predicated some adjustments from time to time. So how did I do? Since I'm also a professor I'll go ahead and give myself an A+. I can also post it on facebook and see how I do, every now and then Mr Clarke my high school art teacher gives me an A+ in the comments section!

Blues Harmony (Benny Cultural Center NDG), 5 x 7.5" cold press, watercolour, February 2021 (No. 2567)

World Inspired Landscapes: Kyrgyzstan

Although they are right next to each other, Kyrgyzstan and Kazakhstan have very different geographies, the former is incredibly mountainous while the latter was extremely flat overall. Kyrgyzstan is at the foothills of the Pamir mountains at a junction with the Himalaya and other mountain ranges. Historically they were conquered by various regional powers, most notably the Turkish ancestors who seemed to have the greatest influence on their culture, which is a majority ethnic Kyrgyz. One of their hobbies is hunting with birds of prey, so I included one in the sky of the painting. The rest of the design shows endless interleaved mountains that become snowier the higher and farther you go. Originally I planned for peaks to show on all the mountains, but liked the seemingly endless heights that this design suggests by having most of the mountain tops running up and off the picture plane. Just one sharp peak stands in the distance. At the bottom of such mountains, the rockfall creates a situation for grass and trees to grow. Similar to Bhutan in composition, this is one the several mountainous compositions I have come up with for the series.

World Inspired Landscapes: Kyrgyzstan, watercolour 5 x 7" cold press, January 2024 (No. 2894b located near No. 3824 Japan)

World Inspired Landscapes: Nepal

Nepal is considered to be the jewel of the Himalayas, most famous for having half of Mount Everest within its borders (the other half being in Tibet). In history Nepal was one of the few countries to not be colonized, it was kind of a buffer zone between two of the global superpowers of the time which were China and the British Empire who were both jockeying for position in the Himalayas. Apparently Nepal is where the religion of Hinduism originated which the spread to parts of Asia. Now it is unfortunately one of the poorest countries in the world, its wealth comes primarily from agriculture and tourism including the famous mountains that people like to climb. Nepal people are well adapted to the high altitudes and specialists called 'sherpas' will haul gear and guide the tourists as they climb mountains. Everest in particular is the biggest, or should we say tallest, attraction for foreign tourists but there are plenty of other great mountains to climb and regions to trek. 

The painting had to feature tall mountains of course, but I wanted to soften the composition by showing some of the lush greenery and flowers, marigolds in this instance, which are wild to the region. There is a similar landscape found in nearby Bhutan, which I captured in an earlier painting in the series. Its well past the halfway point, there are a lot more countries starting with N before moving on to O and P.

World Inspired Landscapes: Nepal, watercolour 9 x 6" watercolour paper, June 2024 (No. 3859)