A Dream World: Ocea Paul Nash

A Dream World

Imagine walking along the dark shale cliffs of the English coast. Down below the waves crash upon the cliffs creating a soothing wish wash of sound. The rays from a sunset cast shadows that stretch out before you. A bird takes flight enjoying the thermals that the days heat has brought. Everything feels perfect. The temperature feels not one degree too hot. The wind whooshes gently and soothingly. The sounds blend together to create a melody of music. The salty smell of the ocean washes away all troubles. One only finds all of this in dreams. Most people have wished for this experience at one point in their lives. Welcome to a Landscape From a Dream.

The large bird standing in the middle of this painting catches the eye first. Two things stand in front of the bird: a mirror and a five section stand-up window. One of the sections stands between the bird and the mirror. In the background, the
ocean washes up against charcoal cliffs. The artist painted a storm cloud coming over the ocean heading towards land. Hills roll across the terrain above the cliffs with patches of grass splotched over the light dirt. In front of the mirror stands a dark-brown sphere with a shadow stretching at a slight angle from it. Inside the mirror, a gazer would find another look at the landscape. A sun sets over the land casting a red blanket over the sky. A bird soars through the air between peaceful white clouds. The landscape consists of rolling hills dotted with the strange brown spheres with shadows reaching towards the mirror. The reflection of the standing hawk shows an expression of longing for the world inside the mirror.

The colors used in this painting stand out to a casual gazer and draw them nearer towards the painting. Dull colors of the outside world contrast with the reds of the reflected image and produce a wanting for the world inside the mirror. On the outside, dirt and grass all have dull and normal colors, while inside the mirror the ground the colors have a much brighter look to them. The sky outside has the light blue of an everyday sky, but reflected in the mirror, an image of a beautiful sunset grace the sky. A deep red sun starts to set on the horizon causing light red to streak across the sky and fade to blue. The blue outside of the mirror has a cold winter look to it, while the reflected red shows a much warmer environment by contrast. All of these mixtures of colors direct attention towards the mirror. The boring colors outside of the mirror don't hold the gazer's attention as well and deflect the viewer's eyes again towards the reflected image, and the brighter colors in the mirror attract the eye. Warmth also warmth also has a more favorable feeling than the cold, which again takes the viewer's attention from the cold blue outside to the warmth of the reflection. These two contrasts of colors both work to create a sense of desire to get out of the boring outside world and step into another world that the mirror represents.

Paul Nash usually puts geometry into his paintings and Landscape From a Dream shows this habit.
Circles and squares in the painting seem to have no other purpose than to add some geometry to the picture. Unidentified brown spheres speckled around add some circles to the painting, while a five-section window placed alongside the mirror adds rectangles. All of these random shapes seem to have no purpose at first glance, but when one thinks about it, the painting would needs these geometric figures. Without these shapes, the painting would have empty space that draws a viewer's attention away from the intended portion of the painting. Paul Nash probably needed something to fill in the empty space by the mirror and decided that a little geometry would do the trick. The five-section see-through window has five rectangles and does not take away from the landscape behind it. The unidentified spheres add a little more shape to the reflection and give it more dimensions. Geometry helps balance out the picture without taking away the message that the painting
portrays.

A person can view the mirror in the center of the painting as another view on the landscape. The viewer can see the mirror as a painting inside of the painting. The similarities that the reflection has with the outside world support this thesis. Looking at the land, the mirror and the outside obviously depict the same place. They both have the same rolling hills with tufts of grass scattered around the same colored dirt. Both the reflection and the outside have the same mysterious spheres. However, the time of day between the two appears to vary. Except for a storm cloud, a clear blue sky depicts the heavens, while the sky in the mirror has many small clouds with very little clear sky in between. This suggests a different time of day between the two paintings. The sunset in the mirror also shows a difference in time. The clear blue sky of the outside world contrasts sharply with the red sky of the sunset. This shows that both the mirror and outside of the mirror show different views on the same landscape.

While looking at this painting, a person might wonder about the whereabouts of this beautiful landscape. Many factors both inside and outside the painting show hint toward a location. The history of Paul Nash narrows the options quite a bit. Born in London, England in 1899 to a successful lawyer, he enlisted in the Artist's Rifles and began to draw life on the battlefields. After recognition for his work, he continued to paint the effects of war on landscapes. After some time, Nash became famous for his British landscape paintings and his unique fusion of the old and the new. Most, if not all, of his paintings depict landscapes in Britain. This narrows down the possibilities of places considerably. More clues inside the painting also narrow down the possibilities to the exact location. The cliffs strike out as the most unique object in the painting. The dark color of the cliffs suggests a black stone such as shale. A town called Kimmeridge has dark cliffs such as these. Coincidently, Paul Nash also lived near Kimmeridge about the same time as this paintings creation. Using all of this information, a person can easily conclude that this painting shows the cliffs of Kimmeridge, England.

Through the colors, geometry and objects, this painting shows a variety of different ideas. Nash probably painted this painting because of the site of the cliffs. Since he lived in Kimmeridge, Paul Nash probably passed these cliffs many a time and they inspired him with their beauty. The mirror most likely represented another time of day that Nash found particularly appealing. This painting shows two different views on the Kimmeridge cliffs that the painter wanted to share with the rest of the world. The colors take a person's attention to the right place and hold it there by highlighting the better points of the picture. The seemingly random geometric shapes placed in this painting in reality take away some of the blandness of an everyday landscape and turn it into something extraordinary. This painting showed true talent and had many things working together to create a true piece of art.