Scaping, Land and Otherwise

What is a landscape, really? When one considers the many styles and views and approaches, it is a difficult concept to explain. The Plein Air painters of the 19th century sought a direct engagement with subject matter by bringing the materials out into the open air. The Hudson River School on the other hand brought sketches and color studies into the studio to increase the scale and apply a more romantic and sublime approach to the mostly American landscapes they rendered. Artists have used modeled ethereal transparent layers to capture the mist and fog of natural phenomenon. They also employ gestural paint swirls and arbitrary color choices to give personal interpretation of the spaces being represented. Also, photographers captured land, sea, air, and space. The digital simulated world gives imagined vistas in still, 3d, and interactive varieties.

The marking off of space with defined boundaries is innate, with Çatalhöyük, an archeological site in Turkey that is perhaps one of the earlier cities, having an early example of a landscape. The artist proclaims "I was here!" Mark Rothko and Caspar David Freidrich provide minimal and contemplative visual ponderings that ask viewers to peer into the the infinite, or the abyss. This range validates the persistent need of artists to express real and imagined vistas. When installed in interior and confined spaces, landscapes open and expand the limits imposed by walls. The imagination of the artist temporarily teleports the viewer to places real and invented. They can narrate a mood or feeling through color, space, and process.

Though my work is abstract, my intent is to evoke place. Often I use memory as a catalyst, but I also allow materials and motifs to provide the inspiration for imagined vistas. As our technology like the new telescopes expand our view of the universe, I imagine that I am stand on the shore of an ocean on some distant exoplanet. The horizon marks the limit of visual perception, but the mind contemplates and transports to infinite vistas.