Alan Wiseman, in The World Without Us, describes the primeval forest that once covered the better part of Europe, one last remaining chunk of which is the Bialowieza Puszcza in Poland. The beginning of the passage (in fact, the first line of the book), reads:

You may never have heard of the Bialowieza Puszcza. But if you were raised somewhere in the temperate swathe that crosses much of North America, Japan, Korea, Russia, several former Soviet republics, parts of China, Turkey, and Eastern and Western Europe—including the British Isles—something within you remembers it.

And further:

To enter it is to realize that most of us were bred to a pale copy of what nature intended. Seeing alders with trunks seven feet wide, or walking through stands of the tallest trees here—gigantic Norway spruce, shaggy as Methuselah—should seem as exotic as the Amazon or Antarctica to someone raised among the comparatively puny, second-growth woodlands found throughout the Northern Hemisphere. Instead, what’s astonishing is how primally familiar it feels. And, on some cellular level, how complete.

I don’t doubt for a second that our ancestry leaves us somehow coded to feel at home in a certain landscape. But this is my heritage, Europe, and I am drawn to something else entirely.

There is no greater comfort for me than the endless expanse of the open prairie. I feel it in my bones when I am in the landscape. It feels like home. This draw has certainly been at the root of almost all the artwork I have done over the past, say, fifteen years. And it is part of what I am doing now. Perhaps my more recent ancestry — my grandparents and great-grandparents worked the land in Nebraska –  has re-coded my genes. Perhaps I have been tuned to a new frequency — that of the unbroken horizon.

Now that I have done a week of every-day landscape oil paintings, it’s worth noting a few things:

First, I feel really exposed doing this. I’ve never painted like this before in my life, and frankly, I’m not that good at it. There have been a couple of decent paintings this week. But there have also been paintings like yesterday’s. Yikes. However, I’ll keep posting as long as I keep painting them — this is, after all, my “digital open studio”. As tempting as it is to edit out the lousy ones, I just don’t think that would be right. Sorry, friends, you are going to have to watch me fail over and over again.

Failure is a good thing; it means I am taking risks.

This is something I have always wanted to do — paint literal landscapes. Oh, sure, I’ve done the odd sketch or watercolor here and there. But I have never applied a disciplined approach to representational landscape painting, and I don’t think I have really even tried any representational oil painting since college. I’ve always wanted a french easel, and I’ve always wanted to paint en plein air. It’s January, so this is not the time for that. But working alla prima is a refreshing break from the slow layering process of the other paintings I have been making over the past decade.

I have given myself permission to make these paintings. (And yes, it was me and my self-conscious awareness of a persona that made landscape paintings verbotten.) I’m taking these little paintings seriously in the respect that I know I have something to learn here. Like I said in an earlier post, I don’t know where this is headed, but I’ll enjoy the ride.

Oh, and the vocabulary! The words rolling around in my head while I work are like old friends come round for a visit: alla prima, scumble, glaze, impasto.

Until tomorrow’s failure,

Matthew

1. Not holding anything, non-attachment

2. Holding on to something of no value; unnecessary attachment

3. Having no toehold; working without a net

4. Exhalation; release

5. Having a grasp of no-thing; understanding nothingness

6. Abandon

These works require both time and patience.

As with my past work, the horizontal banding is meant to create a restful visual field. The slight inconsistencies that betray my hand and the lack of sharp contrast allow the eye to wander across the surface of the painting, never finding purchase. The kernel of reference is to the landscape of the Great Plains where I was raised; however, the resulting composition has become a device in its own right — a simulacrum of the horizon that is meant to evoke the sensation of openness, without direct allusion.

These works are not minimal. They have more in common with John Cage’s 4’33″ than they do with Donald Judd.

These works require both time and patience.

“I spend my time very easily, but wouldn’t know how to tell you what I do… I’m a respirateur — a breather. I enjoy it tremendously.”

– Marcel Duchamp to Calvin Tomkins

“Don’t forget breathe. Very important.”

– Pat Morita as Mr. Miyagi, The Karate Kid

“I think your problem is that you don’t breathe.”

– Irina, a massage therapist, to me