Cornwall To Crete - Nicholas James - Bog

The thirty parts of The Landscape Series were developed in two phases: sixteen sets were made from February 2002 to June '03 and a further fourteen in February 2006 totalling some 1,500 panel paintings. The uniform size of a 30cm square panel grew from the idea of one painting being all painting,or one landscape becoming all landscapes.With gesso and emulsion, mounds and hollows were formed by sweeping and dividing poured paint, using cardboard strips cut from cartons.The panels were laid on a framed base board which also served as a container for pools of colour washed over the textured surface. Two inch square wooden cubes were used to stack the paintings in small towers to dry out.Various factors steered the series: thoughts about load bearing pressures on a place, tracks and crossing points, air flow, water, spaces and intervals, the nature of settlement in the land. Offset corner marks in the panels from the cubes stood for a house, rounds for a moon. Titles were assigned later to the line of production. The identity of a place emerged not by literal description but as an equivalent found by coincidence in the passage of an abstract process.