Students often ask me when painting from nature, "how do I get it to look real?" Truth is, we don't. Never. Even photorealism is inherently surreal in it's effort to exactly replicate the subject matter. I tell them if they want precise take a photo. It's not possible to better or even match something that is already perfect. Nature has evolved over hundreds of millions of years, and combines functional flawlessness with beauty exactness to guarantee its individual survival and a relative sex-appeal that perpetuates it's species' longevity. Even if asymmetrical it boasts a faultless irregularity. No artist's hand can do it justice. But what we can do is capture the overall spirit of what we witness via our own personal interpretation. Such was the magic of the impressionists, at first ridiculed by the Salon in Paris but ultimately winning the hearts and minds of the public because they opened viewer's eyes to a new, dynamic way of seeing. People were awed and exclaimed "it looks so real" not because it was an exact copy but because it engaged the viewer by allowing them to fill in the blanks with their imagination, see mixed hues from juxtaposing primary colours, conceive moving figures in the single fluid brushstrokes. Find your personal interpretation deep from within and execute it fearlessly - there you will find your "real".
