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This investigation of landscapes actually began six years ago in 2000 with a Fulbright Grant for Research and Study Abroad to Chile. This 12-month period was used to create a series of paintings that examined the relationship between Chile’s poetry and its landscape. Upon my return to the United States in late 2001, I decided to continue working on ideas of how the viewer and landscape interact or more poetically, how inspiration and space relate to one another. I chose to address this relationship with a series of oil paintings on large photographs depicting landscapes from Patagonia. These particular landscape photographs were selected because they depicted places that can elicit an otherworldly experience when standing within them. The oil paint is applied in thick layers over the paintings to create a contrast in surfaces. This is meant to represent a space in between the viewer and the landscape. I think of this in between space as being a sort of ‘grey area’ that cannot be defined, a place that exists between what we accept or understand like the spectator and the landscape or photographer and photograph. To me, this grey area is where poetics, poetry and art-making reside.
In October 2005, I was honored to accept an eight-week residency at the MacDowell Colony to create new work. This allowed me to create a second set of images titled “I Was There 2”, using photographs from the Atacama Desert in Northern Chile. These paintings close the circle that began with the ice and cold of Patagonia and here ends with the fire or heat of the driest desert in the world.
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Oil paint and archival pigment on canvas, sizes variable from 81x81 cm to 81x331 cm, 2005-2006 |
