?There are always new emotions in going back to something that I know very well. I suppose this is very odd, because most people have to find fresh things to paint.”
— Andrew Wyeth, quoted in The Helga Pictures, page 94
Being familiar with a subject isn’t the same as knowing everything about it. On the contrary, I think the more you paint it the more you discover. In landscape painting, weather, season and time of day all have an impact on what you’re looking at. Your own mood influences your perceptions on that day. It’s never identical.
A painting need not be one moment in time, but various moments, combining observations, experiences, and memories into one image.
It is exactly the pictorial ritual of Monet (Waterlilies) or Cezanne (Saint Victory mountain) for instance. The former so was the precursor of Abstract Art (Rothko liked Monet) and the latter announced Cubism (Matisse and Picasso said “Cezanne was the father of all of us”). And as Morandi’s obsessional still life, “Going back” in order to go… forward!
I have found this to be true. Revisiting a subject/area even years later both you and the landscape have changed.
I have also experienced this great phenomenon. There were some farm houses on the road, that I liked very much because their grouping and overlapping interspersed with foliage. I liked so that whenever I went ahead by car I shot a picture. My husband told me, why you shot that photo again if you already have one?. I answered him, is because in winter the fallen leaves from trees of the entry way, allows me to see the nice buildings very well. In spring, the color of the new foliage contrasts with the red roofs. And in summer they are only a hint of houses flirting through the thick canopy of trees. I ended up painting those farm houses, and I’m very happy with my picture.