Thoughts about the book
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| LANDSCAPE ILLUSION Landscape Illusion was published in 1987, with but eight years of landscape painting behind me. Although I had studied landscape painting, and realism generally through the 1960s and 70s, during this time I was producing paintings that emphasized formalist abstraction. Landscape Illusion brought design, representation, composition and acrylic techniques into one publication, presenting landscape painting as a comprehensive painting challenge. The nature of the publication was on face value nuts and bolts, trying to make the content accessible to a broad audience. Therefore, some finer points on aesthetics and contemporary landscape painting imagery were not offered. That being said, the section on representation and design was based on the fundamentals of visual perception that support effective painting, still. The section on composition shows how these fundamentals can be applied to landscape imagery, consciously and unconsciously, in providing complex and enduring imagery, touching the depths of human experience. As my painting imagery has evolved over three decades, and with the advantages of hindsight, I can now see more about the visual language and how it can tap into our inner being, expression the unexpressed, revealing much about humankind and ourselves.The book, Landscape Illusion, is available online, used; there’s no reason to duplicate it here. However, I will refresh some of the content with my current perspective, with references to the more recent paintings. Some of this perspective is on this site under About. DC |