Landscape

This is coming is fragments and pieces, reflective of the short periods I've been able to work on it. I will iron the pleats out later.


A painting, in the traditional mode of a two-dimensional surface within a four-cornered frame, has particular attributes of portability, scale, perspective, and immutability that make it distinct from what it represents.

Painted landscapes allow places to travel instead of people, the way postcards used to, and photos attached to e-mail and Facebook posts do today.

A landscape painting is a false window into an unreal world that resembles our own. It is hung on a wall as ornamentation and brings the outdoors in. It allows the owner a certain control over nature, by putting it in improbable places: the southwest-style guest room has O’Keefe on the wall; the Asian bathroom has a misty bamboo forest valley; the mountain scene over the hotel bed might help us forget there are people on the other side.

A familiar painting can offer familiarity and stability. The scene does not change as time passes outside the window—the season is idle, the river and clouds are frozen, the birds are suspended—and this singular scene can be moved between rooms and even houses as the owner redecorates or moves. The possession and portability of a landscape gives the owner, even the viewer, control over nature in a superficial yet powerful way.

Art is decorative and transcends the creation of nature, thus the concept of a Creator is removed and replaced with the creative mastery of the artist. The symbiosis of the natural world is lost for the detail of brushstrokes and the layering of paint. The work of the painter is revered for both the ability of accurately depicting a real place, but also for what he or she inserts into the landscape via interpretation, style and influence as the Hudson River School did in New York in the nineteenth century.

Landscape paintings cannot be mistaken for the real thing; even photographs are always recognizable as depictions, so we have a surface on which to reflect and create meaning as observers. We understand a waterfall as the result of the artist’s process: as technique, and decisions like medium, color, and brush type; not as erosion and plate tectonics.