I consciously wanted to work on a boring landscape scene by the water. The first draft was too busy, too agitated. In this second attempt, I managed to capture a mood better. Actually, I wanted to convey more of the feeling that one has when an evening song or serenade is performed by the water in the early dusk.
The picture has some good parts, but I realized that if I kept working, I could quickly spoil the mood. So I’ll leave it at that for now.
It was only after I finished that I wondered why the mountain on the right has become almost like a volcano. I am pretty sure that it has to do with the fact that I reflected on the news about the severe volcanic eruption on La Palma in the last few days. (To include other natural disasters in my Covid-19 series is pending). And then I heard yesterday that the government in El Salvador had started to use the power of the volcanoes to mine Bitcoins cheaply. An exciting idea.
Personally, I always find it instructive to find out what music an artist was listening to when he was painting a particular picture. In my case, it was an extraordinary piece of music by Tchaikovsky. He is actually not one of my favorite composers, is generally too lovely for me, but this piece is far from being a favor. Tchaikovsky’s Hymn Of The Cherubim.
Perhaps this music also exerts a special charm through visiting the monasteries in Cyprus.
So these impressions were probably also present when I painted this work. An abstraction of a monastery high in the mountains, the simple power that emanates from such sacred places. But Richard Wagner’s Valhalla is not far from it either.
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More of this at landscape paintings
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