In the Field by Esther Huser

One of my goals as a contemporary realism artist consists in stepping back from mimesis. I don’t want to simply copy nature. At the beginning of a new painting, I spend days in the fields, sketching, taking pictures and searching for a lasting impression. For this painting, the leading emotion was my longing for nature even if I stood in the middle of it almost every day. A strange and paradox experience that I interpret as a sign of a deeply rooted alienation of modern man from nature.

Once I have found my guiding emotion, I slowly create in my computer my idealized view of a plant or a landscape out of thousands of pictures and sketches. I invent leaves, soil, stones, light and shadow conditions solely by my own aesthetic and emotional preferences. I mix them with sights from nature and try to map out my perception and my relationship with the subject.