< SOLO 2018
A MIDLANDS IDYLL
A Midlands Idyll | Scott Bennett | 2018 | Oil & acrylic on canvas | 40″x30″ | Private collection
Artist’s Statement
On sunny days, light from the landscape paints the interior of my cottage. The blue of the sky bounces up from its lower surfaces while yellow light reflected from the ground, floods the walls and ceiling above.
I’ve often been struck by a spectacular saffron glow that streams through a window into the kitchen as the last rays of the sun bounce off the old hawthorn* hedge.
This small window reminds me of the earliest landscape paintings – the Idylls or “little pictures” – painted on the walls of homes in classical antiquity.
The early styles used trompe l’oeil to ‘trick the eye’ of the viewer into believing that they were looking through a window. Illusionistic vistas were framed by brightly painted faux-marble interiors with stucco mouldings that added to the three-dimensional effect.
*As one of humankind’s oldest companions, the hawthorn tree is rich in folklore – bound up as it is – in the memories of every recorded age. For thousands of years, the hawthorn was used in the impenetrable living fences that defined the landscapes of both the old world and the new.
“And does one know till one begins?
And let’s Look over hedges far as eyesight lets us, Since road’s not, surely, road, but road and hedge And feet and sky and smell of hawthorn, horse-dung.” – Epilogue by A S J Tessimond