Barbara Ballachey: the scale of the hand

Barbara Ballachey. An Ordinary Hill #1, 1980. 48 x 64 in. (121.9 x 162.6 cm)

This was a painting I could not afford to buy at a recent auction.  It is a particularly bright view of the foothills landscape south of Calgary – gaily coloured, exuberant brush strokes – just a beautiful painting.  In the online catalogue it looked like one thing, in reality it is very large: it is 5' wide.  On line I had understood each mark at the scale of the hand, at most from the elbow to the hand.  In reality the marks have been made with the whole arm, from the shoulder, and likely with the whole upper body moving with each stroke. 

A luddite-ish friend who has recently discovered the wealth of architectural images on the web wondered why he needed to travel all over the world now photographing buildings; he might as well stay home on his computer.  For the economically-challenged, the web is as close as many of us are ever likely to get to serious architecture.  The unfortunate thing, and this is the same with any form of reproduction, is that one has no idea what size anything is.  Still, all these years after Benjamin, we believe that to see a photograph or a reproduction is to 'know' the piece.

There is something introspective about buildings, landscapes, paintings that allows us to examine the materiality, the marks made in construction too small to register on a photograph but which are so telling.  If anything the reproduction does not allow us to consider the longue durée to which architecture, land and art are the witnesses.