Painting the Sublime, the Art of Casper David Fredrich

        Hey everybody! I wanted to pivot a little bit away from my series on pulps to talk a bit about my interest in visual art. I graduated from Montana State University with a degree in fine arts, so suffice to say, I really love painting and drawing. I wanted to talk about one of my favorite artists, the Romantic landscape painter Casper David Fredrich.

                                         Casper David Fredrich Portrait by Gerhard Von Kügelgen 1810-1820

        Casper David Fredrich (1774-1840) was a German Romantic landscape painter that focused on nature, religion, and the sublime, which was a philosophical movement that focused on awe inspiring subjects as a way to humble humanity and remind us of our mortality in the presence of an immortal deity. Mountains, oceans, storms, space, and time are all subjects that fall under the sublime and are explored by Fredrich in his own works.

        Most of his pieces show small human figures standing in vast landscapes where they are made insignificant in the presence of nature. These two pieces show case this very well. "Northern Landscape, Spring" (1825) shows a large spring landscape with two very small humans, made to be almost specks in the face of nature. The other one "Monk by the Sea" (1810) shows a monk standing on the edge of the northern sea contemplating its vast size. Again he is made insignificant in comparison to the vast sea.

        While perhaps more abstract than mountains or seas, time is subject Fredrich covered as well. He showed that man made creations are temporary and will eventually crumble to dust in comparison to God's creation. In the piece "Two Men Contemplating the Moon" (1820) you see that some men who perhaps were taking a nightly stroll or were travelers, stop to contemplate the truly ancient alien nature of the moon. This satellite so far away from the Earth is the same moon that our ancestors looks upon, all of the prophets and even Jesus looked upon, and this same moon will far outlive the average human. "Abbey in the Oakwood" (1810) is a painting that shows a ruined stone abbey in the snow. The painting is a metaphor for how humanities great creations, even churches and abbeys will one day be dust, but God's creation will still stand.

            CDF is without a doubt one of my favorite painters of all time, and I strive to match his rather dark atmosphere and love for nature and the sublime within my own writing and my art. I think I will leave you with what is probably his most famous piece "the Wanderer Above the Sea of Fog" (1819) a piece where a human is the center focus, and we are drawn into a vast and mysterious landscape with him. It's such a fascinating and well made piece that screams adventure. Thank you guys so much for your support, I hope you all have a great week, and remember to stay weird!