SENSE OF PLACE

 

 What is a sense of place?  It comes from my appreciation of the place based on my knowledge and history of it and it can also be how I am interdependent and a part of all of nature. In order to know a place I have to let it run through all my senses and perceptions until I am not just an observer, but a part of the whole. Maybe it’s a temporary part, like an ephemeral mayfly, but none the less, I breathe the oxygen, have a life force of energy and evolve just like everything living in the place. As I paint another bird’s nest view of the valley below I think of Turner and his skies. His belief that light represented God made him fill his canvases with light. Van Gogh said he felt most alive when painting. I think both these artists had a sense or spirit of place in their work. As artists we must go with our deep seated reverence of the land as a means of giving life to our canvas, but it’s the painting itself that takes precedent. It has to be a good painting and stand on its own more than it needs to be a realistic depiction of the place.

 

  In order to make a good painting with a sense of place, I am at my best if I can just paint all that I gather from the place, with nothing between me and the canvas, no anxiety, no expectation, no self consciousness, only painting the experience of the paint and the place .A sense of place is not a separate amplification of a vision or site, it exist, like beauty or love, from experiences. And when I am honest in expressing my experience  ,often  someone else will feel the same way when they view the painting .When that happens, it  gives me a sense of peace.