RSA Scottish Art
Picture Window
 | Artist: David Michie |
| Title: Picture Window | |
| Year: 1968 | |
| Medium: oil on canvas | |
| Dimensions: | |
| Suggested topic: | |
| Source: RSA | |
| View full screen image of this work | |
| Open print version of this work | |
| © the artist | |
| Description: David Michie, son of the painter Anne Redpath, was Head of the School of Drawing and Painting in Edinburgh College of Art until 1989, and continues to live and paint in Edinburgh.Picture Window combines an interior view of a room with a view of trees and sky outside. This combination of exterior and interior was a popular theme from the Renaissance period onwards. In this painting the artist contrasts the decorative, colourful qualities of the upholstered chair and the “busy” sky against the flat shapes of the walls of the room and the dark foliage. Michie's style places flat planes in relation to each other - there is no spatial depth indicated. The window shows several different planes. None of the elements are painted to appear three dimensional, but are shown in front of each other to indicate which objects are closer to the viewer and which are further away. The flat representation is continued within the room, with the armchairs shown almost as decorated silhouettes. The wall is not shown with texture or light and shade at all. This technique tends to reject the “artifice” of representational painting, preferring instead to show colours, tones and shapes in relation to each other on the canvas.This painting shows a variety of different brushstrokes. The wall appears to be quite uniform, with no sign of any marks or texture. The trees on the right of the window, on the other hand, are rendered with rapid, liquid brushstrokes that show lots of texture and energy. Other areas are detailed and controlled, such as the decoration on the central armchair and the black marks within the yellow horizontal panel. When we discuss the subject of a painting, we usually refer to the items presented in the image, or the themes suggested by what is happening or what the title relates to. But in this case the subject of the painting is, at least in part, the painting itself. From the Impressionists onwards, and certainly in Abstract Expressionism, the painting itself became the reason for making the painting, not the representation of a scene or a person. This interior with a view to the outside world shows us no people, only the elements of life in a modern city in a colourful arrangement. | |
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