Landscape Memory

Landscape has a secret and silent memory, a narrative of presence
where nothing is ever lost or forgotten.  
~John O'Donohue~ Anam Cara

This summer I did  a total studio clean out and reorganization in preparation for hosting a few private students here in my cozy studio space. Just one of the many benefits of cleaning and reorganizing is finding long forgotten items and seeing their potential relative to your current process of working.

Long before the use of digital photography I kept a tin box as storage for potential reference photos. I organized them into broad categories - water, sky, and trees.  Anything else was just dumped into the box. 

Sorting through these old photos, some over 25 years old, brought back many memories of place. These images were much more precious than the reference pictures I take now, mostly with my phone. Today I think nothing of snapping dozens of photos (or more) of a particular scene but back then the expense of film and processing limited picture taking. And my favorite photo references I used in a variety of works, cropping bits, abstracting elements, and for works in various media.

All of this reminiscing got me thinking about the power of place, landscape and memories. How the features of a landscape can contribute to our being, our sense of self, that relies on a visual familiarity to feel centered.

From a selection of these remembered landscapes, prompted by my old photographs, I set out to create this series based on landscape and memory. And how this landscape, after over 25 years living in these mountains, serves as a connection to myself. They are painted with watercolor and watercolor pencil on Arches 140 lb cold press and are now available in my Etsy shop. Clicking any one of the images should take you right there.

Landscape is not all external, some has crept inside the soul.
​Human presence is infused with landscape.
~John O'Donohue~ Anam Cara