THE MOUNTAIN SERIES

This series of drawings, paintings, and digital explorations, focuses on the primal,

inorganic, alpine landscape as metaphor, geological time and place beyond personal or

general human scale.

Images of landscapes affect us both physically and psychologically; they resonate with

genetically encoded instincts that we aren’t conscious of. The physical landscape is the

provider of the heritage of human needs, though it also contain threats; threats of violent

upheavals, storms, fires, floods, and fundamentally serve as a reminder of humans’

fragility and vulnerability. Landscapes remind us of where we came from.

Topographic maps define geography, the features of landforms. They contrast the various

definitions of how we perceive the landscape. Symbolic and abstract reasoning enables us

to see depiction as a representation of ideas; Alfred Korzybski assertion: “the map is not

the territory” and Joseph Kosuth’s visual explorations, have prompted similar thoughts in

my use of manipulated and layered topographical maps to underscore perceiving a thing

in different forms of depiction.

Many works incorporate symbols, variations of plus and minus signs. Metal-leaf (gold,

silver) has a connotation of value; I’m gilding the landscape.

The stark images are developed with ink, acrylics, and hand-ground maple charcoal. Some

materials reflect humanity’s interaction with the environment: for charcoal I cut down

trees, split them to size, burn them in my stove, hand-grind the remaining solid chunks of

charcoal into a fine powder. This is contrasted by my interest in using digital technology

to explore image-making in ways previously unavailable.