For this month’s column, Suffolk-based Artist, Educator and Presenter, Grace Adam looks at how country lanes provide rich inspiration for artists – particularly at this time of year
I’m sure you’ve walked, cycled or driven down a road-town or country this month and noticed the overwhelming and wonderful growth. Lanes, roads and streets are very valuable for painters. They provide drama, colour, form and often a satisfying vanishing point.
This country lane in Pembrokeshire has been pared down to near abstraction. Graham Sutherland wrote ‘When one goes for a walk there is everything around one; but one reacts to certain things only, as in response to some personal need of the nerves’ Later he talks about ‘paraphrasing’ what he sees, which is a helpful way of thinking about abstracting elements from a landscape. Like many people, Sutherland took refuge in the countryside as war hovered on the horizon. I think this is a brilliant painting. Without having to paint every leaf and branch the artist evokes the sweeping lush greens of a small country lane. As I write this in May, the lanes are like frothy dark tunnels.
‘Painting is but another word for feeling.’ John Constable
When I look at this wild little painting by Constable, it’s as if I’m standing looking out across the fields, about to set off on that meandering path past Flatford Lock. The trees are billowing, and the clouds are racing. I have to admit that Constable’s famous six footers like The Hay Wain aren’t really to my taste. His sketches made in Suffolk, on Hampstead Heath and in the Lake District are beautiful. No one captures a cloud like John Constable. He was a keen student of the science of meteorology, and some argue that his interest in clouds and the wind was rooted in being a miller’s son. Knowing which way the wind was blowing meant the correct adjustment of the sails of his father’s windmills.
Death on the Ridge Road is like a terrifying cartoon. Here Grant Wood, famous for painting the man and his wife and the hay fork-American Gothic, departs from his usual Iowa agricultural subject-matter. Grant was an American Regionalist painter. Some US artists rejected current trends to paint the American Midwest providing reassurance during the Great Depression. He did though take inspiration from the Flemish Old masters. Grant was apparently a terrible driver and had recently had a car crash. The approaching red truck leaping over the hill, the long ominous limousine, and the Ford all vie for a space on the narrow highway. The road itself slices through farmland. Leaning barbed wire fences are punctuated with tall telegraph pole crosses. If we are in any doubt about impending doom, the clouds remind us. Everything in the painting leans and lurches. Theatrical lighting, strong shadows and an extraordinary viewpoint make for melodrama. It’s an ambiguous painting, and Wood knew this. Is it about the promise of modernity not being fulfilled? Is it about the modest country car and the big city sedan? Is it about his near miss car crash? Despite Wood being slightly out of kilter with the New York gallery aesthetic, the painting was snapped up quickly by Cole Porter. He paid $3,000 without seeing it in person. Cole Porter got it right. It’s such an exciting painting, and I think could only have been made in America.
Roads can symbolise danger and drama. They can communicate connections, progress and change. All those cambers and curves are an opportunity for artists to show off their mastery of perspective, light and colour.
Grace Adam will be running a full day Life Drawing workshop at Blyburgate Hall, Beccles, on Monday May 26, 2025, with a model working all day on short and extended poses, and the opportunity to draw/paint in the morning and develop your work in the afternoon. Included is a lunch, plus the usual tea and coffee throughout the day. Details are on Waveney & Blyth Arts and Facebook. Also, visit graceadam.com and The Art Channel.
A very interesting and thoughtful article Grace