Distracted by Figures in a Landscape

Figures in a landscape should matter to an artist. It is a singularity of our awareness of our surroundings that we are peculiarly sensitive to their presence. (I say this particularly in the context of a rural observer, the experience in a city is qualitatively different.) When one observes a rural view, a human observable in the view has an uncanny way of commanding an utterly disproportionate amount of one’s attention.

Often the countryside can be so empty that it is difficult to verify this observation, but bear it in mind next time you are in a position to do so. In the meantime, let me illustrate and see if my example has any ring of truth in it for you.

Take one of those moments in a walk where a beautiful vista of landscape has just opened up over a valley, through a gateway perhaps. Your eye might suddenly have command of several square miles of countryside. You pause to drink in the view and savour its natural delights, but then, let’s say that perhaps a quarter of a mile away your eye catches sight of a family quietly enjoying unloading bits from a car to take a picnic.

Perfectly reasonably your eye dwells on this long enough to analyse what is going on and you subconsciously decide, quite to your content, that it is nothing of any significance to you (they are far enough away not to disturb you, their activity is happy and innocent). At this point, your eye moves off again across the glorious view, and you start to appreciate how the light shimmers on the grassy field of the valley and creates the most splendid deep shadows to the side of this wood and...

Well, there you are, your eye is back on that family again... are they deciding whether to take hats?... Surely this is of no interest against this fantastic late morning valley view? Look how the silhouette of that distant church is framed against the cloud and the road running up to it just reflects a bit of light through the hedge and.... Oh ... they seem to have forgotten the picnic basket now...it’s no use, you now feel compelled to watch the ensuing cameo of mum (presumably) returning to the car, while the children wait with anticipation with the man (presumably dad) on the other side of the road, until they all disappear happily off into the adjacent wood.

Finally, your eye is relieved of its compulsion and returns to the subtleties of the reflections on the lake in the valley bottom and the way the field, about a mile hence, is changing colour, as a tractor with a mower cuts for silage. Strangely the moving tractor, though noted, has only a little extra compulsion for the eye, and allows you to keep scanning the scene. How striking is the shape of that dead tree in that not too distant hedge row...but now the tractor has stopped. The driver appears to be getting out and walking over to the gate....Oh... there’s someone else at the gate, they appear to have just got out of that Landrover...I wonder...they’re chatting now...something handed over... spare mower blades?... His lunch?

And so it goes on. Sound familiar? Despite the fact that these humans have occupied probably less than a tenth of one percent of the astonishing panoramic vista that you behold, you eye is utterly compelled by them. No matter that your conscious mind tries to make you ignore them and drink in the rest of it, your subconscious mind places the ant-like micro sagas of humanity as a mental priority far above the natural beauties of miles and miles of exquisite landscape. We are so human.