A New Kind of Landscape

I just finished two small landscape paintings that I started in 2012. Crazy, huh. But that's how it goes. Sometimes, pieces take years to resolve. They are called Fringe and Rake.
 
The genre of landscape painting is a foundation in the history of painting and a recurring theme in art that is studied countless ways. Our evolution of language has expanded this word “landscape” beyond its signifying noun for an outdoor, botanical environment, natural or human made.
 
“Landscape” has become an umbrella-term to mean any scope of space, tangible, immaterial, hypothetical, macro or microscopic. This includes internal landscapes of thoughts, emotions and dreams; scientific landscapes of research; religious landscapes of theology and practice; landscapes of business relations; political landscapes and territorial landscapes; social, cultural and ethnic landscapes and so on. We could even discuss landscapes of ethical nature.
 
Metaphor is also extrapolated from the landscape to convey ideas that have nothing to do with any physical span of land. Like, the phrase “low hanging fruit” which was used a lot in 2000 when stem cell research was forging forward at remarkable speeds with cures for neurological impairments within reach. Today, due to dogma that stalled this research, we are more likely to hear that such potential breakthroughs are “on the horizon” meaning somewhere in the distant future. In traditional landscape painting, the horizon is in the background, a placement of design typically structured with less importance or as a “back-story.”
 
In these oil painted landscaped, I have pierced the foreground to place the medical tubes I use to nourish my son “un-naturally.” I attached their tips through the punctures/stomas I made. And this brings your attention to the foremost front of the work. When I am in a state of process, however, I am more intuitive. Conscious thinking is not typically in the forefront of my awareness when I am producing art. Unless, I am struggling with something, thoughts dissipate.
 
Inserting these tubes into my canvasses was not so different from how the tubes are attached to a body being cared-for. During training, there is more conscious thinking, but eventually, skills become intuitive. Intuition comes from learning. These moments of care-taking and art-making are so similar that it’s blatantly clear to me that they are different appendages of the same thing.
 
The attention these tubes bring to an, otherwise banal landscape painting, are the focal point of these landscapes, an intentional purpose. I do not like when aides pull my son from social situations to feed him as if this is something best hidden. My deliberate arrangement of these tubes interrupts previous precepts. The result is a new kind of landscape.
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When the opportunity presents itself, I want to further explore this concept with a much wider, vast horizontal illusion, in mural size with hundreds of feeding tubes.
We’ll celebrate feeding tube awareness, nutritional health and have an inclusive lunch!
(Imagine smiley-face emoji here.)

#feedingtubeawareness #nutritionalhealth #foodie #contemporarylandscapepainting