Eugène Delacroix, Liberty Leading the People, is a giant painting in which the allegory of Liberty charges toward the viewer ahead of an angry crowd who tramples over freshly dead bodies as they make their way through the streets of Paris. We, the viewer, are clearly in her way, and given the gun tooting youth on her right-holding a canvas bag that had until moments before this action was captured, belonged to a then living soldier, had better move out of her path quickly. The composition used by Delacroix captured in his most famous painting is a simple triangle, a classic compositional technqieu used for centuries before him to highlight action and drama-perfectly incorporated here at the height of the Romantic art movement and its underlying philosophy of the sublime.
I chose this same triangular composition for my seascape painting, the working title of which is Resilience. By anchoring the rocks on the bottom of the painting’s composition, and capturing the image just as the rock in the distance is showing its jagged surface, I sought to create the idea of an anchor, rising movement, the coming of drama, and the idea of the sublime-one can smell the salt air, bust stand in this spot long enough and the waves will charge right at you, knocking you over, tripping you over the hard rock and uneven sandy surface.
It is this idea of the triangular composition, used so often in art history, that informed this painting. Like Delacroix, I seek to include the viewer in the composition from the angle of which they would be standing, the make sure they feel the tension and energy of the action, and to stand their ground or move out of the way. Either way, Liberty will trample over you, as will these crashing waves.
