I paint landscapes to make implied spaces that I can look into for distance, and with surfaces up close that I can feel myself touching. The subject is what provides visual distance, and drawing through the paint shows the close creative process. It’s both distance and proximity. I can see the subject; I can feel the process.
I hold strong to the importance of painting landscapes. I like larger vistas than we can see in our constructed cities, and I love the process of making paintings. Drawing through the paint is a creative activity, but it can also be interpreted as a destructive one as well, by changing the surface violently. And I do see us as destroying our world!
I see distances. I touch paint surfaces. I hear the weather of landscapes – wind, rain, thunder, etc. I feel the heat of the sun, etc. I smell the weather, etc. I taste the fruit on trees or growing in fields. Landscape painting requires using all five senses, in concept and in process. The sixth sense seems like extrasensory perception, the mind putting the other five senses to work.
Why paint at all is another subject!
I see water flow, I see the stillness of rock as water flows around, I hear wind in trees. I see the patterns of light and dark. The roots reach to each other and bind the earth solid. I paint the things that hold the landscape together physically and energetically. I see us destroying our world also but I also deeply believe we can save it….You too, you give us that flow of energy, that aliveness of fields and hill and sky, reasons to embrace the natural world, to respect and revere it…thank you.
Allyna