Landscape consists in the multiple, overlapping intricacies and forms that exist in a given space at a moment in time. Landscape is the texture of intricacy, and texture is my present subject. Intricacies of detail and varieties of form build up into textures. A bird's feather is an intricacy; the bird is a form; the bird in space in relation to air, forest, continent, and so on, is a thread in a texture. Wherever there is life, there is twist and mess: the frizz of an arctic lichen the tangle of a brush along a bank, the dogleg of a dog's leg, the way a line has got to curve, split, or knob. The planet is characterized by its very jaggedness, its random heaps of mountains, its frayed fringes of shore.
What do I make of all this texture? What does it mean about the kind of world in which I have been set down? The texture of the world, its filigree and scrollwork, means that there is the possibility for beauty here, a beauty inexhaustible in its complexity, which opens to my knock, which answers in me a call I do not remember calling, and which trains me to the wild and extravagant nature of the spirit I seek. ~ Annie Dillard Pilgrim at Tinker Creek
Ever-Evolving Earth 72" x 54" acrylic
4 comments:
I think this relates to why I enjoy organic elements in abstracted work - its natural.
I feel as if I could walk right into your painting.
Yes, Leslie I agree, once we start to really see the complexity of this beautiful blue planet we tap into an "inexhaustible beauty" that just keeps expanding the more we look, the more there is to see. Thanks for stopping by and feel free to walk right into the painting, maybe I'll meet you there for a walk. :)
I think it's absolutely true that we do not realize the wild spirit we seek...
I am curious what you mean Richard, when you say we do not "realize the wild spirit we seek.." I understand Dillard's words to mean that when we slow down and really look or rather, "see" we are given many glimpses of the wildness of spirit through the ever-expanding complex textures and intricacies of our shared earth.
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