The Imagined Landscape

The Italian author Italo Calvino believed that the imagination was the identification with the world soul––a means to attain knowledge that is outside of the individual. He saw the imagination as a repertory of the potential, the hypothetical––what does not exist, has never existed––perhaps will never exist, but might have existed. He found his own proof in his writing. My images arise from a deeply imagined place. The don’t exist in the real world, or they might have existed in the real world. Inspiration may be a feeling, a narrative seeped in enchantment, ancient mythology, my dreams, a childhood memory, even a family album. They are captured with a camera, then taken into Photoshop where they are authored using all the creative tools at hand. My one rule. No censorship. That leaves my imagination free to experiment. To play. To make mistakes. Try a different path. Start over. There is pleasure in this process. The uncertainty of not seeing everything clearly, allows me as an artist to be open to a world of possibility. I want to be surprised at the image that is revealed to me.

An Imagined Landscape is a collection of images that strive to convey my emotional response to the landscape. Sometimes there are people in this imagined place ––doppelgangers for me–– other times not.  This uncensored repertory of images is how I find my place in this fractured world. They are the heart of my own personal mythology. It goes without saying, that sometimes we are talking about high fantasy.