Whoever wants to know something about me – as an artist which alone is significant – they should look attentively at my pictures and there seek to recognise what I am and what I want.

—Gustav Klimt

I shared this quote from the Artist Gustav Klimt several years ago. The post it was in didn’t have any commentary, only the quote and several of Klimt’s lesser-known paintings, not the famous pieces like The Kiss. I love his landscape paintings, especially his trees, and would surmise, adhering to his own words, that he had a high regard for the landscape and trees around him.

That’s a pretty simple observation. Maybe that’s one of the things he would expect a viewer learn about him from his work. Maybe not. Perhaps he was thinking about how he valued organic forms, the beauty of color or the intimacy of the embrace.

It made me wonder how much any artist really reveals of themselves in their work and what viewers might take from my own work. Does the impression of the artist that viewer has from looking at the work jibe with the reality of the artist or even the artist’s desired perception of themself?

I don’t know that there is an answer for those questions that applies to every artist. I suppose if an artist paints freely without contrivance, they might well reveal much of who and what they are. I can think of many artists whose work I admire who I feel have done just that.

Maybe it doesn’t really matter. Maybe so long as someone sees something they can connect with in any one work, the whole of the artist doesn’t play any part. There are certainly works that I admire that reveal little to me of who the artist is as a person. That makes sense since you seldom know who a person is from a single encounter.

I would certainly hate to have anyone base their impression of me on one encounter. After all, how many people have I come across on days when I am not at my best?

Yikes.

I guess knowing the artist comes with a number of encounters, after an artist has established a recognizable voice in their work. Then the viewer can pull out the subtle, unconscious elements that hint at who the artist is in reality.

Okay, that’s enough. This was meant to focus on Klimt’s paintings. Here are some of my favorite from his landscapes along with a video featuring a larger body of better-known work from Gustav Klimt put together by a Brazilian musician, Juliano Cesar Lopes, who creates musical scores for films under the name JCSL Studio Recording. He has produced a number of short films like this one as a showcase for his skills.

Maybe you will now Klimt a bit better after watching? Who knows?