Below Tower Falls

Robert Mullenix

oil on canvas

12" x 16" x 2"

The concept “landscape” was always a constructed one, offering an escape from urban life through a typically serenely painted “pleasing view”. However, with nature in crisis and the climate changing, we can no longer afford this form of escape. The images representing the West in popular culture continue to offer a pastoral scene devoid of stress and crisis. Yet, the West experiences direct impact of climate change from droughts to wildfires to increasingly heavy rains accompanied by devastating flooding. It is this West that I want to represent. I attempt to use painting to address, rather than evade, these issues. In my attempts to capture luminosity, my paintings are in conversation with the romantic landscape tradition. While I primarily end with an image painted from imagination, I combine imagery from photography with still life, always intending to update tradition. My landscapes are constructed.

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