artist's statement
Inperceptible Strangeness - November 2010
Return to artist statements
Matisse once compared a painting to a familiar old easy chair that you can fall into and find comfort and renewal in. Much of my recent work has explored the landscape as a retreat - a place where we go to recharge our batteries, get our bearings, sort things out. As we find aspects of a “landscape” that we connect with, it becomes a utility for unifying our inner selves with that physical world we live in.
I am now finding myself reconsidering some of my beliefs regarding landscape as escape. When thinking about landscape maybe Goldilocks’ bed is a better metaphor for me than Matisse’s easy chair. No matter how comfortable that bed is, it is essentially borrowed. Even if it happens to be a perfect fit, that one little thing will haunt the bliss of the moment.
My paintings have been turning toward landscape as a place where we might escape, but where we also discover we don’t quite belong. I am not talking about places that seem foreboding, frightening, or particularly dramatic. Many of the paintings I am working on right now are, like Matisse’s easy chair, about a place filled with light, atmosphere, and a general ambience that should free my mind of every encumbrance except for the beauty of that kind of place. I am reminded, however, that some of my richest experiences have been in the woods where I wasn’t lost, but just a little disoriented; and swimming in the ocean just a little farther out than I thought I was; and hiking under a magnificent sunset and discovering that the trail became a good deal more challenging after dark. If beds and easy chairs are metaphors for my landscape paintings, maybe the best experience isn’t the comfortable easy chair; rather it may be the borrowed bed in a world where our tranquility might be interrupted momentarily. I am thinking that for a place to assume a beautiful presence in our experience, it might need some almost imperceptible strangeness that subconsciously keeps us alert.
