For Richard Mravik, painting is an ongoing study of light, atmosphere, and the ever-changing character of the natural world. His landscapes begin with close observation, often returning to familiar places to see how shifting weather and light can completely transform a scene. Snow, mist, water, and clouds become opportunities to explore the way light interacts with different surfaces, creating subtle changes in colour, reflection, depth, and form. 

His approach is grounded in observation, but the finished paintings are not simply reproductions of a single moment or photograph. Drawing from multiple observations, memory, and his own interpretation, he carefully considers the structure and composition of each work. The result is a distinctive vision of the landscape that captures not only how a place looks, but the sense of stillness, wonder, and connection he experiences within it.

Your landscapes have a strong sense of atmosphere and place. What first draws you to a scene and makes you want to paint it?  

It usually begins with light or with a change in the light. I may know a location well, but when the conditions shift, I see it differently. Nature is always changing the composition. Snow, mist, and water are fascinating because they are never visually fixed, and they absorb, reflect, and transform light.  

Light behaves differently in every material. It can enter snow, pass through water, scatter in mist or break across the surface of a cloud. I want to understand those differences and build them into the painting so that the light feels structurally true.  

I also look for structure. I want to understand how the shapes, reflections, and spaces hold the scene together. I focus on how shadows cross the snow, how light passes through trees, and how reflections can blur the line between the sky and water. When these elements come together, I start to envision a painting.

How much of your work is based on direct observation, and how much comes from memory or your own interpretation of a landscape?  

Direct observation is the foundation of my work. Since light is never the same twice, I may return to a location many times to gather observations under different conditions. I spend time looking for the particular atmosphere or quality of light that gives it meaning.  

I use photographs as references, but a photograph records only one fraction of a second. It does not contain the complete experience of being there. Memory retains things the camera cannot - the movement of the light, the feeling of the air and what first caused me to stop and look.  

I often create an artist's composition. I may combine elements from several observations, change their relationships or remove something that distracts from the central experience. Every element must remain believable and true to nature, but the finished painting does not reproduce a single photograph.

Light plays an important role in the mood of a painting. What are you looking for when deciding how to capture light in a particular work?  

Light gives the landscape its physical dimension. It separates one plane from another, reveals texture, describes distance and allows a two-dimensional painted surface to create the three-dimensional presence of the natural world. I pay close attention to the relationships between warm and cool colours and to the small changes that create atmosphere and depth.  

For me, light is an opportunity to discover the beauty that is already there. It reveals the splendour of a place, allowing us to see - and feel - it more fully. When I understand and paint the light honestly, the emotional quality emerges.

Has the way you approach landscape painting changed over the course of your career?

Yes, although it feels less like leaving one subject for another and more like gradually widening the view.

I began my career painting wildlife, which taught me to observe very closely. Anatomy and behaviour had to be convincing, but so did the habitat, atmosphere and light surrounding the animal. Over time, I realized that I was becoming equally interested in the world containing the subject - the snow, water, trees and open space.

Gradually, the animal left the composition, and the landscape itself became the subject. Light and atmosphere gave me a different kind of freedom, but the discipline of looking remained the same. When I return to my earlier wildlife paintings now, I can see the landscape painter already emerging within them.

What do you hope someone feels when they encounter one of your paintings in person?  

I want to share what I experience in the natural world. There are moments when light transforms a familiar place into something extraordinary. I experience wonder, stillness and a sense of discovery. For a brief time, everything else disappears, and my attention is on the splendour around me. Those experiences are what inspire the paintings.  

I want the painting to contain enough truth and presence that the viewer feels able to enter the place rather than simply looking at an image of it. If someone pauses before the painting, feels something of the wonder I experienced and leaves feeling more attentive to the beauty of the natural world, then the painting has done what I hoped.  

Each person brings their own life to the landscape before them. Perhaps this is part of why people connect with the paintings. They do not need to recognize the exact location to recognize the experience. The light, stillness or feeling of standing before something larger than ourselves can connect with a person’s own memories.   

When someone lives with a painting, the relationship continues to grow. As daylight and the light within the room change, different colours, textures and passages reveal themselves. The painting can be quiet at one time of day and luminous at another, allowing the collector to continue discovering it over time.

You have spoken about “architecting light” within a painting. What does that mean, and how is it shaping the larger works you want to create in this next chapter?  

I am interested in extending my lifelong pursuit of light. Throughout my career, I have concentrated on creating a completely convincing experience of light within the painting. In this next chapter, I want to explore how the paint surface itself can also receive and respond to the changing light within the room.  

Scale is becoming an important part of that exploration. In a work such as Winter Sleep, at 48 × 72 inches, light has more room to unfold across the surface. The viewer is no longer simply looking into a scene; there is a greater feeling of being surrounded by it.  

This is the direction I want to pursue in my next body of work - architecting light on a larger scale to recreate more fully the splendour of the original moment.