Have you ever watched a film and thought, “I need to paint that!”? Or, at least, thought that each shot could be a painting?
There are some films that are so wonderfully shot, and each scene masterfully composed, that I, as a a viewer and a painter, am deeply moved to paint it. And it is always a shot of something mundane, too! The compulsion to paint it is a means to comprehend the suggestion of time and space within the frame. Even in copying it, like copying from a master painting, it helps me cultivate my ability to compose. But it always comes from a sense of awe. A sense of a specific time and place, and a wellspring of memories and familiarity.
What’s tricky about that process is finding what exactly it is that moves me about the cinematography. Most of the time, it is the progression of the scene - a collection of frames moving in time. Other times it’s is finding the precise moment where the objects within the frame exemplify the mood best. Again, I’m wrestling with time, or timing perhaps, and I haven’t figured out 4th-dimensional painting yet. There is a prayer in Judaism that helps me mediate the process of time and space, and it begins with “Baruch HaMakom”. It translates to “blessed is G-d” but infers G-d as our place, our place throughout time.
Through my own practice and meditation on this prayer, I’ve found that most paintings are a collection of cinematic frames anyway. Most paintings are an amalgamation of observations - even if it is of the same location, at the same time, day to day - can make for quite the compelling image. One could paint the same spot every day and never paint the same place twice. Conversely, one could paint the same sense of place in a hundred different locations. Painting in a way that suggests this eternality, searching for the majesty in the mundane, brings me back to that sense of awe I find in the very best paintings and films.
"Study without desire spoils the memory, and it retains nothing that it takes in." - Leonardo da Vinci