’A portion of territory the eye can comprehend in a single view’ does not correctly describe the relationship between the human being and his or her surroundings. This assumes the viewer is somehow outside or separate from the territory he or she surveys. Viewers are as much a part of the landscape as the boulders they stand on. There is no high mesa edge or mountain peak where one can stand and not be part of all that surrounds.
Leslie Marmon Silko
Throughout my career and in a variety of media, I have made landscape a central theme of my artistic practice. In photography (Unfolding, Vestiges and Place, Juncture), painting, and drawing I have sought to make sense of the vast western landscapes and the people who inhabit them, including their intrusions and detritus along with the rock spires, deep canyons, crested mountains, and raging rivers that comprise this region.
While creating a body of multi-media work addressing cross-generational trauma, I utilized landscape as a metaphor for the space, both physical and emotional, between myself and key family members (Tetralogue). Through painting, drawing, and occasionally sculpture, I have examined how we represent and attempt to connect with the landscapes in which we live (Fusion and Fragmentation, Topophilia, Two Ways). In a recent project lasting an entire year, I used fragments of previous artwork to create a daily art piece inspired by nurse logs as they embody the cycle of life, death, and rebirth within a living landscape (Me in Reverse).
My current body of work (Inside Territory) explores two other avenues related to landscape. In the first, inspired by the desire to reduce the amount of waste that often results from artmaking, I collect fallen branches in natural areas and cure them in a small, home-made kiln to produce the most primitive of media, charcoal. I then utilize this charcoal to draw the landscapes from which it was made.
In the second avenue, I use non-objective representation of landscape to reflect on how humans interact and connect. The non-objective nature of this work aims to free the viewer from restrictions imposed by realistic renderings of landscape. The linking of landscape to the human interactions encourages both artist and viewer to experience themselves as part of the natural landscape, not as entities separate from it.
As I move forward with this body of work, I would like to marry the two different avenues described above into a cohesive series---creating work addressing landscape using materials from the landscape and accepting my part in this landscape, through reflection upon personal human interactions and relationships. I view the final piece of the Inside Territory portfolio, Bancroft Ponds, as a point of departure for this endeavor.