A simple landscape depicting unsuspected discoveries at the base of a mountain. Small hills and valleys, depressions and winding shapes, changes in direction are all pleasant surprises that we have never really noticed before. And suddenly there is a grove of trees pointing upward to the peak.
Could Mother Nature have planned this?
Are thistles weeds? Usually when artists paint a floral landscape or still life, they are looking for lush and exotic flowers, rich in color and searching for a dynamic composition. But instead, in this painting, we have a simple flower, sometimes pink or bluish purple sitting in brambles, yet appearing strangely attractive.
Maybe we are just looking in a mirror at ourselves.
Seismic events which cause great damage to property and people always seem to get involved with politics. We might ask why havenʼt our elected officials warned us in advance or made us build stronger buildings or had better equipment to dig us out? Or maybe we should blame ourselves because it means higher taxes.
This artwork was once an overhead landscape that had been cut apart and shifted to mimic the movement of the tectonic plates. The surface treatment suggests the force of that movement and there are renderings of subsurface geology that have been collaged along the fault lines.
When seeing the landscape from the air, you are no longer concerned about traditional space and composition. Your view is a matter of patterning directly below and the distant terrain is without true elevation. You lose the sense of height of trees and mountains and buildings, and instead you now see geologic formations, cities as maps, and forests as botanical plans. And because you are looking straight down, there is no need to be controlled by the horizon, which normally helps to position things in distance and space. So you resort to creating the illusion of space by exaggerating the intensity of color.
One of the interesting advantages from this point of view is that distant shadows become blue and purple, which in traditional landscapes is the color the sky as negative space. But these colors, in richer hues, can now become positive space, so all distances are ambiguous giving you a dynamic sense of movement.
The bottom of this painting has more clarity and its shape is enclosed by the airplaneʼs window while the atmospheric and far away terrain opens up as expanding curved shapes at the top of the painting. The balancing act here was to successfully unify the composition, when there are numerous points of perspective.
My inspiration for this painting comes from my love of botany, encouraged by high school and college courses. It is not only about the visible external beauty of plants but also about what their perceived symbolism might mean to our existence. When plants reproduce, they do so without inhibitions and respond to all the needs of survival. Consequently, as disinterested voyeurs, we can observe this floral erotica without embarrassment, which is not the case when observing other life forms uninhibitedly exhibiting similar reproductive and survival instincts.
So, upon closer examination, who knows what we might find? Do plants have feelings? Is there passion in pollinization? We assume that only humans have souls and to imagine such emotions in blossoms and blooms must seem ridiculous. But for some of us who are awakened in the night by the sounds of delight coming from our gardens, especially during the springtime, it must be very thought provoking.
In our area, winter is light but long. Then comes an unsure spring, quickly followed by summerʼs blast, hardly giving time for plants to implement their designated seasonal routine. Nonetheless, all was successful once again and if you missed the lustful frenzy of this botanical bacchanalia, it is most unfortunate.