En Masse – Artist Statement

My most recent work is an investigation of landscape begun six years ago.  As a landscape designer and former geologist, I am interested in landscape as space, and in landscape’s materiality.  I want to depict landscape in a way that powerfully expresses its formative forces, spatial qualities and tactility – landscape as more than a view.  I would like to put the audience in the landscape.

My artistic work complements my academic and professional work.  As a landscape designer I need to convey the full experiential quality of my designed spaces.  I have always found traditional presentation drawings – elevation, section, perspective – limiting. This body of artistic work grew out of that search.

One aspect I am investigating is medium.

My newest desert landscapes are paper (art, acid-free, wall, translucent/opaque) applied to canvas with matte medium as glue and sealer.  The pieces are very layered.  Although the finished work is flat, its obvious tactility lends depth and immediacy.  The layers are also evocative of geologic processes (sedimentary, tectonic, surficial) that underlie topography.

Scale is a decided conscious aspect of these pieces.  These landscapes encompass large expanses, but the pieces are small and intimate and consequently expressive of place.

As a designer I often collage plan and elevation drawings to better illustrate my landscape designs. Techniques used are:  papers applied to rendered (colored pencil, marker) ink drawings, paper-only “drawings”, and digitally collaged drawings and images.

I also frequently create site impression pieces that express the genius loci or spirit of the place, as I come to understand it; these can be sculptural or collaged.

The body of my landscape work also investigates perspective, abstraction and horizon.