The Landscape Challenge...

2000 - North Forty - 60x36

Declaration - this is the year I will dedicate my efforts to the landscape. Seriously, that is. I've done lots of landscapes throughout my career but they were more happenstance than a determined series. (I'll be showing plenty of them as we move along.) Now the focus will be to create a body of work that relates but in such a way as to be uniquely mine. Okay, okay... nothing in art is unique and I fully realize that landscapes have been done to death in every possible interpretation. If we let that sort of detail stand in our way, we'd all toss in our brushes.

My main goal is to satisfy myself that I've taken the genre as far as *I* can, in the best way that *I* can. I want them to not be so different from my abstracts; they should be recognizable as my work. Therefore there will be plenty of texture, layers, ruled lines, earthy colors... red included (I'll try not to lean,) and they will be big.

I'm tossing in one more challenge, although I much prefer to paint verticals, I will focus on horizontals. Why? Why turn away from a preferred format? I don't really know except that I'm trying to move out of my comfort zone in order to force creative options... yeah, sometimes creativity has to be butt kicked into performing, sad to say.

The above painting is a past favorite... if I could do a year's worth of those I'd be grinnin'. A year or so later I tried to mimic the painting in a smaller, squarer format that didn't have the same punch. (Mimics never do.) Can't imagine it as a horizontal... would never be the same.

(There's an echo in my head... sounds like 'Shut up and paint!' .Nah... )