---

ARTIST'S STATEMENT

In his book Political Landscape art historian Martin Warnke makes a statement about the current situation landscape depiction finds itself in:

“Man’s devastating exploitation of nature has put an end to her argumentative force and autonomous authority. Permeated by foreign substances and marked out for destruction, she may still elicit sympathy and inspire relief measures, but she can no longer assist us by furnishing arguments for legitimacy. The rich reservoir of motifs and experiences that once guided human action…has run dry”. 1

It is this idea of our changing perception of the landscape and its loss of “legitimacy” as an artistic device that continues to encourage my own practice.

From its emergence in the 15th century, western landscape painting functioned as a stage to describe political metaphors or to promote religious and moral values. By demonstrating their affiliation with nature, governments and ruling powers made claim of their dominion with an assertion of “natural law”. In addition, the wilderness was also regarded as a fitting place to speak of religious values and ethics; either as a description of Eden, the setting for the “Rest on the Flight into Egypt”, or simply as a manifestation of Creation, the natural world was commonly paralleled to faith as an embodiment of timelessness and the eternal.

However, one has to concede to Warnke's claims in that it is no longer possible to regard nature as a primeval and “autonomous” body, detached from the pursuits and aspirations of civilization. It certainly fails to make confirmation of its original social, political and religious declarations, but instead becomes an anachronistic subject and often a solely aesthetic experience.

Nature seems to remain of course, but not without extrinsic influence, leverage or incentive. Our consciousness of nature is opened to more ambiguous renditions and instead seeks to be redefined. From a reductionist's perspective, the landscape can be broken down into intimate segments. I choose to illustrate nature in isolated vignettes, rather than with abundance and monumental attributes often found traditionally in the genre. Married to this sense of infrequency, there is a transitory and weightless character to the work, distant from historical associations assigned to nature as continuous and immutable. Our own generation's perception of nature is widely varied from antecedental ascriptions and one that is increasingly based upon the mercy and discretion of humanity. The handling of paint and attention to detail is stylistically reminiscent of classical sources dating from the origins of natural landscape painting, while simultaneously congruent to a modern viewer's rational understanding of the environment. Paradoxically, I have hoped that through selective application of elements like composition and evocative use of dramatic light and colour, to communicate a kind of romantic and spiritual exigency; one that continues to be sought out in nature- albeit in the West, a less collective and less definitive form.

My ambitions in painting are an attempt to understand nature as an idea; one that is subject to varying interpretations historically, and dependent upon the zeitgeist and praxis of a given time period. While considering the origins, language and traditions of the depiction of nature (most often exemplified through landscape painting), I hope ultimately to cultivate a definition pertinent to my own age.

1. (Reaktion Books, London, 1994) pg.146

---

AndyMacLean