Dream Landscape

The imaginary landscape as a metaphor for the human journey
At times, although the abstract (or abstracted shapes) are important to me, I'm also drawn to the idea of the dream landscape. This is a landscape traversed in the imagination, symbolic in form and also metaphorical. I like the idea of a road or path or again, a resting place. If one thinks of life as a journey, then the metaphors of landscape fit. At times one is in the pasture, at other times climbing hills or mountain passes. If you also factor in the ideas and metaphors of wind, rain, sunset or sunrise etc., ideas of a barren or fertile landscape, the seclusion of caves or the confusion of forests against the openness of a flat empty land, all of these notions have a correlation to our bodies and mindset.

The White Road
The White Road
One thinks, for instance, of the Arctic wastes and associates journeys through that space with endurance, the closed self reverential mind wrapped up, as the body must be, internalised and protected against the harsh outer environment.

The beauty of such places, pristine and untouched by mankind, is in opposition to the deadly forces of a nature inhospitable to the fragile needs of humanity. In pictures constructed to recall these dream spaces, the senses are encouraged to imagine the feelings associated with the colours and textures of the painting or drawing. The eye and mind re-creates the journey across the surface of the work, linking with and employing the metaphors.