The Invisible Man
I am expanding my repertoire of subject matter to include street-scapes. Streetscapes is a play on "landscapes," of course, because landscapes by definition are void of subject, and streets are normally populous with subjects. To right the analogy, therefore, I should say I have been airbrushing homeless subjects from the picture.
The effect is similar to that of viewing an empty room. If the occupant is absent, the room has a completely different feel, than if the occupant was unknown, or if the room never was occupied. An absence which is palpable is what makes landscape painting poignant.
Those who entertain notions of the paranormal assert that ghosts are not people, but an impression left upon reality by a person, like a holographic imprint. The remains of an improvised sleeping place left on the sidewalk made by a homeless person has a similar effect.
The residue casually deposited by the homeless after moving on has an unpleasant effect similar, I take it, to that of ghosts. Sigmund Freud took the phenomenon of the supernatural seriously enough to make of it a special study. He called that shudder of dread, the cause of which we cannot place, das unheimlich.
Even without knowledge of German, a play on the familiar word homeless may be entertained. The German has many, many words and phrases for homelessness, some of which are quite droll-sounding, even to non-native speakers. I translate unheimlich not-home.
A landscape painting is like a theatrical stage from which the players are absent. The audience finds the absence of players from the stage disconcerting for mere moments, and unendurable for any length of time. In art, the addition of presence changes a landscape from scenery to drama.
It calls Heidegger to mind. The absence of presence constitutes the phenomenon of spirit, geist in German, a word distinctly cognate with ghost. It is strange, unfamiliar, unsettling. It can be terrifying.
Landscape art emerged from Romanticism. Romanticists' forays into the woods, the twilight, rustle of leaves, unseen menace, shadows that move, voices mistaken for the breeze, straying from the beaten path, getting lost, and consequent panic were to them pure inspiration. It endures as a preference for the macabre.
One-of-a-kind works of art can be viewed at: https://www.saatchiart.com/account/artworks/1840403