The point of art is to make us look again at the world with new insight. Hardly surprising, then, that the monolithic yet sensuous exhibition at Les Baux de Provence (see previous post) should fracture the real landscape into shards and layers of colour devoid of sharpness. Here, for example, is the main road through the Luberon valley, captured on digital camera from a moving car.
The cherry and apple orchards are in full blossom, and it's the time of year when the grass between the trees and vines is bright yellow, thickly speckled with dandelions. I snapped away through the open window out of curiosity to see what would be captured on camera, hoping to get something of the lines and layers of these small regimented fields.
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This morning I've had some fun playing around with the images by cropping them, isolating parts that seemed interesting. Now, I'm well aware that to most reasonable people, these are simply blurred photographs, but if you relax and don't try to focus too hard, you can see that they have elements in common with paintings, the suggestion of what is there in life and the light. After all, this is the way the Impressionists began, by daring to suggest rather than slavishly reproducing.
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This last is as far as I want to take it - vines, dandelions and a drift of blossom - but even so, it makes an interesting pattern with naturally complementary colour. I'd quite like it as fabric for a scarf!
