LANDSCAPE

Artist Statement – Landscape

Being above timberline with only basic shelter, I experience vastness as only nature expresses it through the horizontal line of the sea or the pyramidal shape of a mountain.  These high alpine images as metaphors are what my paintings are about.  Whether I chose the metaphor and sought the images in high places or the alpine environment embodies the metaphor, I am not sure.  I do not know if the object innately has meaning or if we project meaning on to the object.  Color and light as I use them in my painting suggest clean air and unspoiled land and a longing for purity in a physical sense, though purity at a deeper level is what is coveted and the lack thereof mourned.  I notice and dislike the mind/body/spirit splits, the mutual exclusivity of science and spirituality and the divisions between cultures and ethnicities.  I yearn for connectedness and constancy.  Because geological time is imperceptible to me, I see nature as an ever-enduring infinity.  This alludes to a spiritual realm in which there are neither splits nor divisions-hence the subject of landscape.

Judy Graham, Silverton, Colorado, March 2005