The Foreground as a Tool

Something I have been considering in my paintings is the foreground. In this image you can see I have added a foreground level to the earlier landscape. The motivation for this has been a number of factors:

1) The experience is important to my work. I want the viewer to feel they are in the space even if the detail isn't photographic and the colours have been effected by the process of working from ink jet printed photographs. The use of the foreground element makes it seem as if they are lower behind the plants and isn't an angle you would normal see unless you actually got down in the field and saw that perspective.

2) Following on from this it's this angle that is so different from the normal framing of a landscape photograph. You would not ordinarily have a focus on the foreground because it's what's out beyond that would normally be the focus for the image. This framing is important to the feeling of presence.

3) The use of foreground is also a cinematic tool, and is important because the source material for the image is a still from a film I shot in the English country. Using the foreground can be a tool to draw attention to this level or when referring to the background be used "to point out a significant relationship between the two subjects." (https://collegefilmandmediastudies.com/cinematography/). This foreground is something we recoginse through the medium of film and points out connections between painting and film that I hope to develop in my practice.

This opens out important relationships in my work between the history of landscape painting and the cinematography that will help guide my visual language.