What a Tiny Painting Taught Me About Scale

Small Paintings, Big Paintings

Small Impressionistic Landscape 5” x 7” oil on unstretched, treated canvas

I’ve always leaned toward painting large. Not just big, large. Most of my landscapes and seascapes measure at least 5 by 6 feet, with some stretching to 4 by 8 feet. When I’m working on that kind of scale, the size itself becomes part of the artwork’s story. It’s not just about what’s on the canvas but how the canvas commands the space it’s in.

That scale mirrors how we experience the outdoors. When we’re out there, everything feels massive. Trees stretch to the sky, hills roll on endlessly, and the horizon feels like it’s miles away. By painting large, I try to bring that same feeling indoors. It’s a way to shrink the outdoors just enough to fit inside while still making the viewer feel dwarfed in the presence of nature’s scale.

Detail of Small Impressionistic Landscape 5” x 7” oil on unstretched, treated canvas

The challenge? Not everyone has room for a painting the size of a small billboard in their home. That reality’s been nagging at me. So, I’ have started asking myself: Can I create the same sense of bigin a much smaller space?

Painting Small, Thinking Big

Enter my new obsession: small-scale impressionistic landscapes. These pieces are tiny compared to what I’m used to, think 5 by 7 inches instead of feet. The goal? Somehow capture the same sense of a big scale in a size that could comfortably fit on a bookshelf.

I’ve been experimenting with expressive brushstrokes, but more often than not, I’ve been turning to my palette knife. There’ issomething raw and immediate about the way a palette knife lays down paint. It forces me to focus on texture, movement, and energy. All these things that can trick the eye into feeling like it’s looking at something much larger than it really is.

I find myself asking, “Why am I even trying to do this?” The irony isn’t lost on me. I am trying to make a small painting feel huge when I could just go back to painting big paintings.

A Small Painting That Left a Big Impression

Years ago, I worked for a guy who had one of the best collections of 19th-century American art in the country. His name’s even on a room at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art.I n his home, he had this tiny painting, about 4 by 6 inches, of an Indigenous fisherman carrying a massive catfish over his shoulder. The fish’s tail dragged on the ground.

Despite its size, that painting felt enormous. It practically dominated his living room. How did the artist pull that off? I still don’t know. But that little painting has been living rent-free in my head ever since.

As I’m working on these small landscapes, I keep thinking back to that fisherman and his catfish. If that tiny painting could feel big, maybe there is hope for my little landscapes yet. I’ll let you know how it goes.