Inspiration:

For the past two years, I have been working on a series of paintings, drawings and cyanotypes of landscapes that explore the difference between lens-based looking and seeing with the natural eye. I think about the many ways the world (particularly viewed panoramically) is mediated in order for us to apprehend it- through the sense organs, the camera lens, and digital media- and reflect on how these various distances affect our sense of place, time, and memory.

Process:

I am currently exploring two ways of working:

In one, I sand down old paintings and turn them into new ones by applying thin layers of paint, almost like watercolor, allowing the memory of the older work to show through. I make a series of paintings of one location at various places and times and then assemble the slightly disjointed images together. I think of the cubists, who were trying to paint the experience of actually looking at something phenomenologically, rather than from a single, fixed vantage point.

The other process involves photographing a location, then tracing the image on an iPad to create a hand drawn photographic “negative” which I then print as a cyanotype positive. This lengthy process prompts me to look deeply at a digital image of a place and translate it back into the organic realm of hand, eye, and sunlight. I sometimes think of it as “slow art.”

Subject:

The Adirondack landscape is a panoramic sundial within which one can observe the time passing. Having visited Lake George for over fifty years, its gentle shores are, therefore, the perfect location for my musing upon place, time, and memory. 

I have additionally been visiting and studying the specific places that the Hudson River School painters made famous in their work. They invented the concept of American landscape that still largely holds true today, and I am curious about the role of the artist (and also the viewer) in describing and defining the experience of a place.