Al Serino: Landscape Painting

Landscape painting, also known as landscape art, is the representation in the art of landscapes - natural landscapes such as mountains, valleys, trees, rivers and forests, especially where the main subject is a broad vision - with its elements arranged in a consistent composition.

Here, Brooklyn-based landscape painter, Al Serino, explains more about landscape painting.

In other works, landscape backgrounds may still form an important part of the work. The sky is almost always included in the view and is often an element of the composition. As Serino explains, detailed landscapes as a distinct subject are not found in all artistic traditions and develop when there is already a sophisticated tradition of representation of other subjects.

The well-known landscape painter, Serino, shares the fact that, the two main traditions stem from western painting and Chinese art, and date back well over a thousand years. The recognition of a spiritual element in the art of landscape has been present since its beginnings in the art of East Asia, drawing on Taoism and other philosophical traditions, but in the West it becomes explicit only with Romanticism.

Landscape views in art can be entirely imaginary or copied from reality with varying degrees of accuracy, such as the landscape views in the paintings of the talented painter, Al Serino.

“If the main purpose of an image is to represent a real and specific place, in particular by including the buildings in the foreground, we are talking about a topographic view,” says Serino. Such points of view, extremely common as prints in the West, are often seen as inferior to the landscapes of fine arts, although the distinction is not always significant. Similar prejudices existed in Chinese art, where literary painting usually depicted imaginary views, while professional court artists painted real views, often including palaces and cities.

Al Serino shares that there are three basic types of landscape painting: sublime, nature dominated by man, and nature colonized by man. He incorporated the three types in his latest collection of landscape paintings.

If you are interested in finding more about the types of landscape painting, read the blog of Al Serino.