In this video, award-winning artist and workshop instructor, Ann Templeton demonstrates her unique style of oil painting.  She begins by explaining the choices of colors on her palette and the working characteristics of each. 

Next she discusses brushes and technique.  As she begins the painting we see and learn her concepts behind “abstracting the landscape.”  Masses, line direction, value, intensity, the push and pull of color, brushwork, surface mixing, and painting mediums are all important elements that she covers.  She also talks about locating the center of interest and controlling the visual movement by linking darks, lights, hues and the opacity of paint.

Ann quickly carves up a landscape into a jigsaw puzzle of shapes, values and color, and then lays this on the canvas with swift, sure strokes. Even before the introduction of details that may suggest leaves or rocks in the river, the abstraction appears as a landscape, because Ann retains the properties of a landscape. She makes one shape bluer and grayer than the others so it reads as a range of distant mountains; another shape, greener and richer so it reads as an upright plane and suggests a nearby thicket of trees; a third shape, brighter and more yellow so it reads as the flat plane of a meadow in the foreground. Even at this point of simple abstraction, she has crafted into the piece a feeling of depth and atmosphere. The details that signify leaves and rocks in the river she will add — if she adds them at all — only to emphasize her center of interest, and only if they do not stop the rhythm and flow of rich, vibrant color.

This video is an excellent example of Ann’s work and her process of painting. It is also an invaluable tool for anyone interesting in learning how to simplify and creatively express the landscape.