On the Process of Painting a Picture
"View of Cadillac Mountain - Mt. Desert Island, Me" Oil on canvas 30”x40”, 2016
I work primarily from photographs that I take with this intention. Naturally, I take many more photographs than I end up drawing or painting.
The process starts by selecting an image that corresponds to my current formal or representational interests. This is followed by exploratory drawings in which I try to acquire a thorough understanding of the pictorial volume and the forms that occupy it. I draw by defining in this volume shapes that construct a lucid and compact representation of the subject. In addition to this depictive function, drawing is a means of adjusting and refining the pictorial design toward a more satisfying composition. As one draws, one composes.
Perhaps as importantly, I try through prolonged looking to conjecture the climatic and atmospheric qualities that conditioned the appearance of the subject. These qualities which we normally sense with our skin as much as we do with our eyes are a foundation of landscape painting. In my work, it is the concepts I form of them that determine the chromatic composition of the painted image. If drawing is based on comprehension, color is invariably an act of interpretation. From a formal perspective, color completes—and often redefines—the pictorial design in terms of its own plastic properties.
I ultimately paint an idea of the subject. This idea is transportive to the extent that it is imaginative. One starts with facts, or images of facts, and ends with pictures of the human imagination, always and by necessity.
Nagib Nahas - July 2017
The process starts by selecting an image that corresponds to my current formal or representational interests. This is followed by exploratory drawings in which I try to acquire a thorough understanding of the pictorial volume and the forms that occupy it. I draw by defining in this volume shapes that construct a lucid and compact representation of the subject. In addition to this depictive function, drawing is a means of adjusting and refining the pictorial design toward a more satisfying composition. As one draws, one composes.
Perhaps as importantly, I try through prolonged looking to conjecture the climatic and atmospheric qualities that conditioned the appearance of the subject. These qualities which we normally sense with our skin as much as we do with our eyes are a foundation of landscape painting. In my work, it is the concepts I form of them that determine the chromatic composition of the painted image. If drawing is based on comprehension, color is invariably an act of interpretation. From a formal perspective, color completes—and often redefines—the pictorial design in terms of its own plastic properties.
I ultimately paint an idea of the subject. This idea is transportive to the extent that it is imaginative. One starts with facts, or images of facts, and ends with pictures of the human imagination, always and by necessity.
Nagib Nahas - July 2017