When a landscape can feel more like a portrait

I've done quite a few commissions now, and feel that I can speak from a place of experience when I say, landscape paintings can sometimes feel like portraits. Let me explain.

Commissioned "portrait" of a landscape // Brisbane Jazz Club, 30x30cm // Artist: Julie Lucht de Freibruch

When an artist is creating a portrait of someone, they are often trying to capture the likeness of the subject. The likeness is usually when someone can look at that picture you've created and go "I know exactly who that is, and it looks just like them!". One can take this for granted as it's a key feature of a good portrait, but as anyone who's tried to create a likeness before, it can be very challenging to achieve.

So, how does this relate to a landscape artist such as yourself? (I hear you ask, and I'm glad you did!) Usually when you're painting for yourself, you can paint a location and it doesn't matter to anyone but you whether or not you've rendered it accurately. However, when it comes to commissions, it becomes vitally important that what you've painted reminds the commissioner(?) of that place: its likeness.

When an artist is creating a portrait of someone, they are often trying to capture the likeness of the subject.

Take for example your family home. If you wanted a painting created of it, it needs to really remind you of that place, with similar look and feel, otherwise you might as well have ordered a generic painting, rather than one you want as a memory instigator.

I therefore find some commissions a lot harder than my normal paintings, as I grapple with trying to get the proportions and the atmosphere of the building correct. Will these colours jog their nostalgia? Or is this not representative enough?

The other challenge is that I'm not a realistic painter - I don't slavishly copy all the items in the image, all the leaves and plants. So in essence, there's a lot of summarising and hoping that the key elements you've picked out are the ones that the client identifies with!

Reference images used for the Brisbane Jazz Club commission:

Interestingly, despite all this wrangling, commissions are priced exactly the same as normal off-the-shelf artworks. I know, crazy, right??