As I look at landscape I retain the forms, colors, and textures in my memory
as separate elements. On the canvas they combine in new ways, different
from how they appear in nature, but consciously brought together and
reconstituted to form a composition – a new place, a landscape-dream
environment that has its own logic and integrity. I set up a tension between
figuration and abstraction, between the familiar and the otherworldly, and
between memory and imagination. My intention is to draw the viewer into
an imagined world, at times enchanted or mysterious, even unsettling.
I paint in oils because I like the fluidity and luminosity of the medium.
One can easily paint over, take out, or rediscover, allowing an enormous
flexibility. I start by observing nature or landscape, and continue in the
studio where a painting builds up, self-generates, takes on a life of its own.
I am continually challenged by how to use color in combination with
drawing to create an illusion of space, or a mood. And there is, of course,
the challenge of capturing the elusive qualities of experience and memory.
My hope is to reveal on canvas an engagement with a world that is familiar
but unknowable, even sublime.
-Sandys Moore