My series of Landscape Paintings titled Loaded Landscapes invites contemplation on images of landscape that link to our interiorizing of place. From far back in human history we have had as an activity of mind the promotion of certain places as recognizable types to which we attach (impose) meaning pertinent to our deepest impulses, aspirations, and ambitions. Just a few of the places that we hold as intrinsically expressive of our internal lives have been, and are still, the deep wilderness and very tall trees, high mountain peaks, and of course, liquid and frozen water.
However, in the categories of the serious art of the day, Landscape Painting has nearly disappeared. There are a number of reasons for this, perhaps chief among them is down to the stringent philosophical exigencies of the post World War Two critical forum that ushered in the era of Abstraction with its emphasis on the flat as a first purpose. Partly because Landscape Painting resided all too closely (in form) to all of the incipient forms of Abstraction (that are more purely derived), it necessarily needed to be sidelined (in favor of pure Abstraction) as not having anything much to tell us about the intensities of modern life.
In time, despite the struggle between the aestheticians who sought to birth the new painting (Abstraction) from the old (Landscape), we witnessed a crisis in painting in general that questioned altogether the age-old act of laying paint to ground. Landscape, Figuration, and Abstraction itself were being discredited in the face of the realities of the 20th century, and in terms of the development of new mediums and ideas about what constitutes art making. Painting’s practitioners began to wonder if they had reached a dead end. Finally leading some to declare that ‘Painting was [indeed] dead.' Ironically and ultimately, this meant Abstract Painting in particular. One part of the irony in this, of course, was that some of the same criteria being advanced for painting’s end had been advanced on behalf of Abstract Painting over all else.)
Right now there is a resurgence of painting as a compelling practice. This work is going on apace and we are finding some resolution for these problems... A re-estimation of the purpose of painting, what it is and does in terms of some of our more deeply held concerns, is ongoing and I maintain that the representational concerns of painting before now were primary to the communication of the essential beliefs and feelings available to us as perceptive beings...
These factors, in terms of the ongoing human drive to understand our inner realities, point to our need for finding a way of expressing states of mind and heart and I present the notion... that Landscape Painting can be once again a particularly potent method for the expression of these ideas and concerns in paint...
The internalities of the human condition, both mundane and sublime, remain to be explored more comprehensively in the art of our own time and that Landscape Painting, as a powerful tool for this exploration, must take its place beside the other forms of art that we call forth to express these ideas.
Landscape Painting is, and has been, a primary tool in the kit of art... I offer that Landscape Painting's resurgence is necessary and as important as all other forms of painting. It merely needs a restored forum for this to become apparent to all.