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The
nature of art for the artist and the viewer is a very personal
experience. The artist speaks into the void, perhaps with an audience
in mind, perhaps not. Many artists will defend their right to
self-expression with no thought for posterity or prosperity. But
what is art unless there is, at some point, an audience to appreciate
and share the experience, to complete the creative cycle that
began with some thought, feeling, or desire to commit to paper
or canvas the image of that experience?
For
myself, art is activity, interaction with something felt or observed,
filtered through emotion and sensibility and intellect, and expressed
through the medium of painting. That I choose landscape as my
dominant subject is simply because I respond to the abstractness
of the light, colors, patterns, and shapes that are so continuously
varied with the slightest shift in point of view or passage of
time. I could choose to paint my dreams, which are always wonderfully
complex, symbolic, and epic in scale, but I prefer to enjoy and
learn from them and keep them to myself. Nature, however, holds
mysteries as deep as any dream. Perhaps this is not so unusual
since we ourselves are sentient nature, the observers and chroniclers
of all we experience.
There
is a rich tradition of the landscape in painting from cave paintings
to contemporary renderings. Desire, urgency, utility, reverence,
and other motivations have colored how the landscape has been
viewed or interpreted through the centuries. Even abstract painters
create views of landscapes hidden from all but themselves, their
own unique vision fleshing out the emotional, symbolic, or intellectual
images of their wanderings and explorations. Their art may be
the signposts for those who choose to follow.
As
you experience my work, do so however you choose. I would invite
you, though, to look beyond the tree, the zebra, and the mountain.
They exist only as images connected to other images and cast as
reflections of thoughts moving across the surface of the painting.
Color, shape, light and dark, these are the real players, for
they help us make sense of the vast array of sensations each of
us experiences in any given moment. They also invite us to play
along: to experience the trees or the poetry. We can choose either
or both.
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