[Kahn] “…plays with imaginary color in an otherwise commonplace landscape. The simple image of a river bend becomes a chromatic fantasy ‘so entirely about color that you don’t even think about dark and light’.”
(Source: Wolf Kahn page 90)
How realistic does colour need to be in a landscape painting? How far can you intensify it before it becomes unreal, and does that necessarily mean it doesn’t work? How much can you enhance what you see to create an emotional impact or to convey the strength with which you experience the landscape?
If you let colour overtake everything else in the composition it becomes a painting with its roots in realism. A painting about colour rather than landscape, but the roots give viewers a way into the painting. A way to relate to it and feel you’re able to understand it (or some of it) rather than being completely lost about what you’re looking at as often happens with pure abstracts. Whether you limit the realism to ‘roots’ only, or add a few more aspects of the landscape (‘branches’ and ‘leaves’), that’s when an interesting dance can happen as you juggle realism and abstraction.