SANDBLAST.

Images shaped by force.

There is so much more to a landscape than simply what the eye can see. These paintings seek to tap into the natural energies beneath the surface and give them form, taking the idea of the romantic sublime to an abstract and sculptural level. They carry a desire to transcend a world in turmoil, or perhaps to revel in watching it explode.

All-over line play invokes the geological and climatic forces that create the landscape in the first place. The paint is layered like geological strata, with hard lines sandblasted into the surface, exposing it to an accelerated erosion akin to hard winds and cutting debris. This allows a textured play of light and monumentality reminiscent of earlier work with war memorials. The artist engages with the irony of implied permanence and its ultimate futility in the face of geological time.

Just as the sublime in landscape painting grapples with the raw power of nature and the infinite, the contrast of bright lines against dense paint creates an organic, painterly vastness and timelessness, as dynamic as a tempest or volcanic eruption.

At the same time there is a slow, evolving intimacy, like the rhythms of plant growth and the turning of the seasons.

andrew Paul wood