Filling in the blanks

Landscape at a distance

The first artists that come to my mind when I think about landscape: Richard Diebenkorn, Mark Rothko, Richard Long.

Richard Diebenkorn's Ocean Park series adopted a format that evoked the outer space of his Californian studio as viewed through his studio window, all lines and layered spaces of human suburbia, its topology flattened; distant space made close through surface-driven abstract painting.

Mark Rothko produced some interesting and deceptively monochromatic works late in his career and are among my favourites of his. They appeared around the same time the Moon landings were broadcast on TV and like most Rothko paintings went untitled except for a description of the 'top' (as in, assumed) colours, which were 'black on grey'. Fittingly, most people who actually had a TV at the time were likely watching the Moon landings in black and white.

These paintings evoke a sense of distant spaces brought closer together, the Moon somehow pulled even closer to home than when viewed through the lens of then-new broadcast technology. We wonder at the meaning of it all, and how close these two spaces - the living room and the Moon - have become, while Rothko found a new muse just beyond the horizon.

When Richard Long came onto the scene in the mid-1960's with his A Line Made By Walking series, he took landscape painting outdoors and archived the experience through photographs and personal notes. We examine the landscape through another medium, at once distanced yet we can dwell vicariously though Long's own experience. We don't have to be there ourselves, just know that he was. There is a sense of wonder in these interventions in nature, pathways that trace straight lines across often huge distances on barely-altered land (and often with complete disregard for barriers, borders and other obstacles, both man-made and natural, not conforming to well-trodden paths). Through these works it's hard not to think about time and space and the marks we leave long after we're gone, and how we might reach beyond ourselves.

Although made by one person, Long's land art signifies ideas bigger than just himself. It is about the marks we all leave behind. When he began bringing more elements of his experiences into the gallery - painting on walls using dirt and soil that came from his walks and reusing other gathered materials like pieces of slate to create spaces in sculpture parks - we are confronted with the outside as a physical thing: land that has been captured and transformed and taken out of its original context. The land has been transported to us, and we are its intervention(ists).

Perhaps this is also the future landscape of Rothko's distant, blurry, indistinct Moon: a surface topology altered by new pathways that come into focus when the next Richard 'Armstrong' Long moonwalks across its craters and valleys, drawing lines across a future-contemporary canvas whilst simultaneously referencing the past.

What is landscape?

Landscape is, quite literally, shovelled land. And so it is land that has been altered in some way by human intervention. It is an abstract mass. Landscape can also describe regions of space that make up both our inner and outer worlds. It is a mutable. It has indivisible boundaries exerting invisible influences that are our connections to the environment. It has peaks and troughs and rivers that flow within and around it. We inhabit it, and it dwells within us and is part of a shared memory, both local and massive. For these reasons I almost always work from memory as the experience of being in landscape leaves an indelible mark on the person. 

Additionally, like land paintings change over time. They undergo constant (re-)development. They become transient, a build-up of layers of lost spaces. The past gets obscured as the surface takes priority, processed via the serial influence of the preceding layers. These different spaces continually influence one another. A painting therefore is a landscape and one that bridges the inner-outer divide between us and the world. It is a way to process and visualise how the world around affects you. 

Abstract landscapes can therefore be a way to express the relationship between space and control. And perhaps also the relationship between conformity and landscape, explored through the lens of All-over painting that emerged in the mid-twentieth century.  The active attempts to cover the future past by smearing the present has contemporary political resonance. All artwork should be an interrogation into expectations and accepted norms, and can challenge ideas about conformity.

Current research

I'm currently working on a project that combines landscape interventions with old photographs. The content of these photos is an emotional landscape arranged within a contrasting exterior landscape. The aim is to highlight a separation between the past and present as two separate spaces, to explore slippages between them and to uncover new significations. I hope that the work triggers a more general conversation about our connection to the environment.

Additionally, I am researching the nature of conformity and how the rejection of conformity and the impact of social dilemmas can be expressed in abstract painting. 

What is abstract painting in the age of conflict and division?