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Some Thoughts….
In the mid 19th century, painters of the American West conveyed the idea of the awesome, frightening yet beautiful landscape, new to the eyes of the European settlers. By contrast, in the 20 and 21st centuries, the sublime experience of landscape has been experienced in a very different way . In the middle of the 20th century classic films such as ‘Laurence of Arabia’ or ‘Dr Zhivago’ with their luscious photography, shown on the large cinema screen, gave millions of people a sense of the beauty and the danger of both the landscape and the epic historical events occurring at the time. A similar sense of capturing the weight of history was achieved in the film ‘Ghandi’, filmed in the early 1980’s.
This century has seen an explosion of computerised reality; the scenery of New Zealand stretched, and manipulated in the Lord of the Rings in addition to the proliferation of computer games in which you can build your own world.
The field of animation has also given us many sublime experiences- the snowy Chinese mountains in Mulan; the episode in Monsters Inc which takes place in an automated warehouse, large beyond the imagination. While my visual references may come from the above, many ideas are often suggested by literature, music or poetry. The work also references the history of landscape painting. The history of this genre is littered with examples of manufactured worlds. Caspar Friedrich’s landscapes may look entirely natural but their compositions are constructed with a mathematical rigour whose sole purpose is to induce in us a sense of the sublime – not to reproduce some ‘natural’ scene.
With the use of digital photos of real places and/ or computer improvisations , I create oil paintings on canvas inspired by these sublime visual experiences ‘on screen’. Painting has had many challenges and inspirations through technological development particularly over the past 2 centuries. By borrowing the enhanced colours of the computer screen, techniques of 2d animation and software paint packages I create ‘traditional’ oil paintings on canvas which engage with these new virtual worlds and question the place of painting within it.
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Alex Dewart Feb 2008 |