Redtree Times

The Color of Night– New & Coming to Principle Gallery

We are the children of our landscape; it dictates behavior and even thought in the measure to which we are responsive to it. I can think of no better identification.

–Lawrence Durrell, Justine, 1957

This is a line I have highlighted in an old dogeared copy of Justine, the first book in the Alexandria Quartet from Lawrence Durrell. Even before I had an inkling that I would ever be an artist and painter of landscapes, this idea of our landscape affecting our behavior and becoming an integral part of how we see ourselves struck a chord in me.

I think we have two landscapes, the one that we live in externally and an inner landscape primarily based on our external world but manipulated and shaped in a way that allows us to find those things we need in either. Maybe it is security, tranquility, connection or communion with something larger than we find in the external world.

I am not putting this very eloquently, I know. It’s one of those concepts that is more felt than articulated. I have often pointed out that if I could put these thoughts and feelings in words, I would have no need to be a painter.

This is probably as good an example as you’re going to come across which means I am going to just let it be as it is except to add that what I believe the artist is trying to do is create a better version of the landscape in which they live and love. At least, better in ways that speak to that artist.

The hope is that the altered world created speaks to and appeals to others as well. Maybe inspires something in them that allows them to add a new color, form, or feeling to their own inner landscape.

Sometimes that is the case. Sometimes not.

After all, you may not want to live in my world– inner or outer. And that’s okay. As it should be.

Here’s a song I like very much from the Black Pumas. It’s called Colors and might well fit for today as singer Eric Burton describes his own inner and outer landscapes. I can see his world from here.