Working in the Terra Aurora Gallery over the last few weeks I have been developing another painting in the series of elegaic landscapes. Title: Elegy 9, Size: 200x40cm, Media: Oil on Linen .
A sepia brown base layer with a silvery grey overpainting creates a nostalgic atmosphere and references drawing, old paper, or photography rather than realistic colours. We can 'read' the landscape as the poetic evocation of an idea exploring a relationship, or philosophical disposition towards time and space, or as conjuring a sense of the 'genius loci' rather than an attempt to capture a specific topography or 'real' place.
We are drawn, literally, to the horizon, a visual illusion of distance using linear and atmospheric perspective. Time is a conundrum in which our memory of the past, and how we imagine the future exist only in the present moment. Space equally confounds us; the closer we move towards the horizon the further it recedes from us, when we arrive 'there' we realise it has become 'here', in reality we never actually left 'ourselves' in the 'now/here'. Both the landscape and it's image created on the canvas were, and are events in the mind which were, and are embodied by the materials and processes of painting.
"Quod fuit ante, relictum est, fitque quod haut fuerat, momentaque cuncta novantur."
(XV.184–185) Metamorphoses Ovid.
"What was before is left behind, and what was not comes to be; every passing moment is renewed."
Below are the various stages in the evolution or development of the painting.
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