Exploring musical and spatial rhythms through the use of oil and cold wax medium.
The Interplay of Rhythm and Structure in Landscape Painting
When I walk into a forest, I don't experience it as a collection of individual trees. What strikes me first is the rhythm of the place — the intervals between trunks, the shifting patterns of light, the way one space opens into another. Over time, I have come to realise that these relationships are often more important to me than the objects themselves.
In the studio, a painting rarely begins with a detailed description of a particular location. Instead, I find myself responding to underlying structures: repetitions, pauses, compressions and expansions. The process feels closer to music than representation. As the painting develops, I am listening as much as looking.
The spaces between trees are especially important. They are not empty. They carry tension, anticipation and movement. In music, a rest is not simply the absence of sound; it is an active part of the composition. I think the same is true in painting. The intervals between forms create moments of pause and transition, allowing the eye to move, hesitate and continue.
Spacing plays a central role in this experience. A slight adjustment in the distance between forms can alter the emotional character of a painting. A densely packed stand of trees may create a sense of compression and intensity, while wider intervals can open the image, allowing it to breathe. These decisions are rarely calculated in advance. They emerge through the act of painting itself.
As forms repeat across the surface, variation becomes equally important. No two trees are identical, no two passages of paint perform the same function. Repetition establishes rhythm, while variation prevents that rhythm from becoming mechanical. The painting begins to find its own internal tempo.
I am interested in the way a viewer moves through a painting. The eye does not travel in a straight line. It wanders, returns, pauses and discovers unexpected connections. This mirrors our experience of landscape itself. We navigate through shifting relationships rather than fixed points.
Perhaps this is why musical analogies continue to feel useful to me. A painting unfolds over time, not in the literal sense of music, but through perception. Themes emerge, recede and reappear. Certain forms act almost as refrains. Variations develop. Tensions build and dissolve. Meaning is generated not by any single element but by the relationships between them.
My forest paintings are less concerned with describing a place than with exploring these structures of rhythm and space. The forest becomes a field of relationships — a network of intervals, movements and visual echoes. Through painting, I am trying to understand how these patterns shape our experience of the world and, in turn, how we experience ourselves within it.
If you’re interested in how material limits shape decisions, I wrote more about that in The Knife’s Edge…”
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