Landscapes of economy, scale & pleasure
(thoughts on Landscape 2020)
Just above Keswick in England’s Lake District you’ll find Latrigg Fell. On its southern flank there is
a bench, just an ordinary wooden park bench. It’s a relatively easy walk to get to and because of
its proximity to the town and good pathways, it’s a popular excursion that starts in the town itself.
Alternatively, do a google search on ‘Latrigg bench’ there are plenty of images of the bench itself, and
the landscape looking south across Keswick to Derwent Water.
“ the view is full into the rocky jaws of Borrowdale, through which the Derwent is seen pouring his
crystal stream. Castle Crag, stands first of all above the forest of embattled rocks, who’s forked
heads reared to the sky shine like spears of burnished steel. Langdale Pike advancing to the clouds
overlooks them all.”
Thomas West, (1778) A Guide to the Lakes of Cumberland, Westmorland and Lancashire’
I’ve been fascinated by ‘landscape’ for a long time. Why it looks the way it does? How it’s evolved,
managed, used and sometimes abused and… as it relates to my own work, is it possible to transfer
personal experience to a single visual image?
The word ‘Landscape’ first appeared in written English in the sixteenth century of Dutch/German
origin. Its suffix, ‘scape’ is derived from the German verb, ‘schaffen’, meaning ‘to shape’ and infers
that decision or selection has taken place over its use or appearance. The man-made bench on
Latrigg is where it is for a reason and it rewards the walker with a perfectly formed, pre-framed
experience of a Lakeland panorama.
Whilst most often and traditionally associated with the natural environment, the ‘landscape’ is equally
applicable to an urban, built or interior or increasingly, even a virtual one. But, for the purposes of this
written observation, lets stick with the idea of landscape painting as we can all readily accept it,
a view of somewhere or of something orientated to convey scale and distance
and contained within a picture plane.