Travel as Art

Barry and Margaret Williamson
January 2012

Travel as Art: We draw analogies between oil painting and travelling; between the artist and the traveller. Each requires a start on an empty canvas; each begins with only an outline idea of what is to be achieved. Some start with a large canvas and the time and resources to achieve a great ambition; others prefer to work in miniature and perhaps in greater detail. Some artists and some travellers specialise in close ups, still life or portraits; others reach for sweeping landscapes. The time line stretches from an interest in the historical through the contemporary to a vision of the future. Eschewing photographic reality and documentary detail, both artist and traveller may trend to the illusory, the ideal, the figurative, the abstract.

Each painting, each journey proceeds with a multitude of brush strokes, working and reworking each part of the surface of the canvas or the country; in each, the picture emerges only slowly; in each, scenes, objects and characters can be added, avoided or removed; and the process has no end. The mood can be dark and sombre, or light and lively. Time defines the need to pause or stop, sometimes in a comfortable place, sometimes abruptly and in full flow, sometimes through a breakdown, sometimes through failure, a giving up; but the picture, the journey are never finished.

The images generated by the artist and the traveller may have the freshness and vigour of a first encounter with their subjects, or they may have the depth of mature reflection, the insight of experience or, indeed, the weariness or disillusionment of repetition.

The painting may be hidden away, or ornately framed and hung on a wall, privately or in a gallery. The journey may be kept in a private log or diary, or shared with friends or elaborated into a magazine or website article. Other people may seek the original of the picture or the journey and copies may also find an audience. The journey remains the unique property of those who made it, but other people want a replica of it, they may want to copy it, in whole or in part. Or just dream of it. Perhaps, above all, it is the artist who is recognised and remembered, as well as the object of the painting. And so it is that the traveller is remembered, along with his/her writing, as well as the subject of the journey. The object of the painting and the subject of the journey remain, independently of the artist and of the traveller.

A Website is an Art Gallery.
A Blog is Graffiti, easily expunged.
A Tourist Trip is a Jigsaw Puzzle with a pre-set picture and pieces just waiting to be bought, collected and put in place.
A Holiday is a Sketch, a Doodle, Art as Therapy
A Packaged Holiday is Painting by Numbers
Staying at home is a Blank Sheet.