"Landscape as Architecture"
November 12 - December 14, 2005
at the Sylvia Winslow Gallery
of the Maturango Museum
Artist's Statement
"Landscape as Architecture" is the first of two conjoined series, the other
series being "Architecture as Landscape." With both series I am dealing with
fairly formal concerns.
With "Landscape as Architecture," those formal concerns are an examination
of how best to render natural, stripped-to-its-geological-bones landscape in
such a way that it implies the intent and interrelationships that we find in
architecture. Such as:
- The conjunction of positive and negative space between adjacent towering
rock formations that we might just as easily find between two skyscrapers.
- The rhythmic cadences of patterns of water-worn stone that are so nuanced
and articulated that they could have been designed by human artifice as
eye-pleasing surface decoration.
- The implication that by exercising our imaginations we can imbue landscape
with the structural sense of purpose and human creativity implicit in
architectural design.
With the second series, "Architecture as Landscape," I'll explore how to
depict the artificial structures of architecture so that they begin to
visually break down in our consciousness from their purpose of human
function and instead take on the sensuous abstraction of nature's forms, and
to reflect nature's cycle of birth, growth, decline, death, and rebirth.
This particular series includes source materials from ancient sites which
are, in fact, slowly reverting back to their natural components.
The idea is to set up a reverberation of sorts between the two series, until
our visual perceptions of both the artificial and the natural begin to merge
-- to focus our awareness, become more present to the physical aspects of
the realities we find ourselves exposed to, immersed in.
I began this work initially with gouaches on big sheets of heavy-weight
watercolor paper. Each takes months to execute. So after completing a few, I
switched temporarily to chalk pastels on half-sheets of standard pastel
paper as sort of two-dimensional maquettes, allowing me to explore a greater
number of specific images before committing to the larger format.
In both the water media and the pastels, technically I tend to "massage" the
pigment into the paper. I'm currently working again in gouaches, but this
time the paper is stretched and mounted on wood. I enjoy the contrast
between the opaque, soft glow of the pastels and the bright, stark crispness
of the gouaches.
M.M. Roessner-Herman
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