Selecting an Aesthetic Composition. Taste or judgement? Instinctively found through the evocation of primordial senses: arousing a sense of joy and freedom, criss-crossed with energy and excitement of line, rhythm, light and colour.
Understanding the physiognomy of the landscape through direct observation and physically tracing the land by foot, help to form personal experiences. They do not however trigger immediate responses, but become slowly absorbed over time and interwoven with subsequent experiences. The process of a visual output therefore responds to the experiential residues of a place.
The subject of the landscape is all encompassing. So alluring that for too long, I lacked curiosity and contemplation beyond the obvious and literal. Allowing the sublime to soothe me. Lingering in the memory through my visual and indulgent response.
Search and Enquiry. The process of observation, connection, internalisation, interpretation and outcome will always remain experimental and self-informed. A process of re-familiarising. Feeling confident to disengage from the once known to trust the re-drawn landscape that is invented through a new journey. The foundations of this must derive from the first generation memory and experience. The essential qualities that provide a ‘landscape’ with depth and interest are to be found through the enquiry of drawing.
Drawing from the land and drawing from the re-imagined landscape. Through the process of drawing, the image is stripped down instantly and simplified. It becomes a flexible and organic visual investigation to find form, harmony and rhythm. When the life of a painting removes itself from the landscape it becomes important to redefine the form. Often reliant on 2d reproductions: photographs, drawings, sketches, the experience becomes flattened and needs reawakening through linear investigation. A quest for the plasticity and spirit in the mass!
