Traditional landscape painting has been depicting landscapes for centuries some with painstaking accuracy. At one time it was an artist right of passage to travel and paint inspiring landforms such as Yellowstone, Yosemite or Niagara Falls. But how does an artist really capture the three dimensional texture and evolving movements of such natural landscapes such as Volcanoes, Springs and Coastal features.
I see these textural paintings as the next step evolutionarily in the ‘painting’ genre. They become paintings AND sculptures.
This current series ‘Grand Prismatic’ has really encompassed the last 10 years of working with this medium and material. The ingredients of which are a carefully, mixed blend of glue, sawdust and paint which have become the perfect material to create such a landform. Natural springs are formed from water rising through fissures in the earths crust. These paintings take on their own natural and evolving processes. There is clearly an absence of the artist hand : the brush or palette knife, in the work. “ I have to rely on instinct but natural processes of evaporation and solidification to create the aesthetic desired.”
The main ingredient, the sawdust, would usually have been disposed of and thrown away. So there is something very rewarding about giving it a new lease of life and forming beauty from a material not usually identities with art and beauty.
I love natural geography and drone photography so this is really rewarding process personally. Once I have added the material to the canvas they can take several weeks to dry and form which is a rewarded time to see them gradually from.
