LandE scape
Joanne Gravelin
CONTEMPORARY ART REVIEW
source of inspiration is traveling . And specifically road trips and train trips throughout the US . I ’ ve taken a bus by myself from Portland , Maine to Atlanta , Georgia . I ’ ve been on a train for two weeks straight , traveling across the US landscapes . And have recently been up and down the west coast a few times seeing the gorgeous scenery of California and Oregon . What enthralls me in travel are the moments in-between . The mundane places that are neither here nor there , but entirely familiar . The view from the side of the road with vast open fields , little tufts of shrubbery and trees and a line of telephone poles leading to the horizon . That ’ s what I like . I am much more focused on the journey and the feeling of being neither here nor there .
These scenes are my contemporary landscape . In my paintings I ’ m highlighting that mundane yet sublime beauty that is today ’ s landscape . In painting a nature scene with little bits of man made lines and poles scattered throughout the same way one might paint a lakeside sunset I want the beauty of the everyday to shine through . There is a beauty in the way I see the world while passing through .
When showing clear references to perceptual reality , your paintings convey a subtle abstract feeling that provide with dynamism the representative feature of your canvass . The way you to capture with an universal kind of language quality marks out a considerable part of your production , that are in a certain sense representative of the relationship between emotion and memory . How would you define
in your practice ? In particular , how does representation and a tendency towards abstraction find their balance in your work ?
The balance of abstraction and representation definitely impact how you view the landscapes . The places are always some kind of recognizable landscape simply through creating distinct horizons , plant life , even buildings in some works . And with that as a footing in reality I feel it is my color scheme that adds a lot of the abstraction . With the addition of unnatural and neon colors I achieve a dreamlike quality . I use a lot of pastel colors to paint hazy skies