There is Landscape and then there are Landscapes. I specialize in both I guess. Almost every morning I go out and draw what I see in nature. Often it’s a kind of nature journaling. This work most closely aligns with the traditional Landscape genre. Here are a few examples:
These are mostly landscape drawings not “paintings” per se. And they include lots of wildlife. Drawing is useful in that it allows me to quickly keep up with the things and “actors” I see as I view and participate in nature, the landscape.
When I’m in my studio however, “nature” is replaced by the art making practice and traditional art making materials: paper, watercolor paints, chalk, etc. And a different form of landscape emerges. The algorithm changes a bit. My emotions and judgements are fairly consistant but the questions I ask of them are quite different.
I have many more examples of both kinds of Landscape and landscapes. I’ve been in love with nature from the very start and focused on landscape-oriented art all through art school and graduate school, which in the 1980’s included photography and site-specific and traditional sculpture. My comfort in both ways of working, which are seamless to me, is their immediacy and directness and the challenges they offer me. And is no shortage of challenges to look forward to as my vocation evolves.
(And I should add, that my portfolio of illustrated children’s books trends decidedly to natural and animal subjects. So despite the differences in the questions asked of me, the answers come from a similar need to celebrate and hold up all that I can encompass of nature. It’s all congruent. What may seem like the work of a dilettante is whole cloth to me and I hope you see that too.
