Walking through ideas.

        

                                                                4928  422. morning ride.

Since landscape is an idea and we like to locate our ideas in some way so that we may plot our location and know where we are I have been thinking about how I might register my walking or cycling through the landscape in terms of painting. We are so used to the window, the frame and yet the Chinese have told the story of an event ( isn't walking an event?) using a scroll and therefore the landscape unravels in time as well as through our hands and eyes.

 Now that we have Google maps and street views I can see the plot of my paths before I set foot on them. I can see where they go before I go there. Yet when I traverse these routes there is so much information that it is hard to know what to do with it and how to use it to make the painting, which is not so much a recording of my journey as a distillation of it.

                                       

tracks on the land.light on the hill, afternoon / evening. 120x120cm.

My painting is about ideas: I re-use them to further an idea. I have re - introduced the grid because it is the tool used to plot the landscape on the map as much as the tool used to plot a painting. It also does something to the surface that helps me think about space - that which I move through and experience - and how I might place field and sky, tree and path. The space shifts as I look at it. This bit becomes clearer for a moment but then less clear as my eyes refocus and I would like to try some paintings that deal with that aspect of looking. So these are just two more things to think about.   

                                     

                                                        oil on wood panel. 120x120cm.

oil on canvas. 50x50cm.