Research point

The course notes recommend Tacita Dean who has done enormous, impressive chalk drawings of mountains, and Seurat of which this is my favourite, lovely dark and moody. Both use the colour of the support to highlight and contrast their drawings but Dean is much more "painterly" with her chalk and although the drawings are quite abstract we read them as mountains. Seurat has done a much more figurative drawing but there is evidence of him searching for the correct line whereas Dean appears much more confident in her execution.
My problem is that I find a lot of landscape paintings dull not just my own drawings. I love the countryside but if someone wants to paint a landscape I'm more excited by people finding beauty in the urban landscape. Tom Brown, Patti Molica, Lindsey Kustusch (particularly the cars at night) These are all colourful images, partly because there is more colour in the urban landscape and partly because there is more colour available to todays artists.
There are some impressive abstract landscapes such as Light Structure by John Hubbard and I like Henry Moore's landscape drawings such as Windswept Landscape which is a very simple sketchy drawing.  I also find I am starting to appreciate JMW Turner specifically his later more abstract work.
It is difficult to compare artists from different periods because styles are so diverse. Turner was very much ahead of his time and his works still look fresh and lively, there are modern painters doing very abstract work like Nicholas Herbert and others who work quite figuratively, like Ken Bushe who does some lovely cloudy skies.