Towards the Mountain
2006
30cm x 40cm
Acrylic paint and pastel
Cezanne painted mountains a lot, and one in particular.
He knew a great deal about mountains, he really understood them, and I think he loved Montagne Sainte-Victoire in Southern France as much as he loved oil paint. That had to be so, otherwise the marriage would not have worked as completely in accord as it evidently did.
The Dutch/American painter Willem de Kooning said that ‘Content is a glimpse’, and of course, it is. So had he painted mountains, the outcome would have been different.
My image of the mountain is more of a glimpse, always moving, always changing and thus, hard to pin down.
Therefore, it is rendered in fragments of form against a background of hard and soft pastel, sometimes made almost liquid with fixative, so that when dry, acrylic paint is laid over it, the paint can be cut and manipulated and anything superfluous removed.
This gives an effect of shapes and colours floating in pictorial space, within a deep, layered background, but as innate parts of the whole, not stuck on to the surface like collage.
It took a long time to work out how to achieve this, a lot of trial and error in fact, as it seems counterintuitive and demands a great deal of control, but also, requires the confidence of considered spontaneity.
So, my painting is flatter, there is little illusion of perspective, it’s more in the nature of a journey, we’re heading towards the mountain, but we’re not there yet.
Maybe, that’s it, just emerging in the ‘distance’?
George Taylor
June 2026
George Taylor Website - Gallery 4
