Thoughts on Landscape and the Topography of My Painting
"When in a natural setting such as a forest, we are sensitized to our surroundings in a manner that we don't experience in any urban setting. The silence of a tree, blade of grass, or a moss-covered stone fills our periphery with a sense of familiarity and comfort. We surrender our senses to a fundamental contemplative state. I isolate the seemingly insignificant features buried within the setting of this forest and consider aspects of distance and scale. The forest becomes a stage; the tree becomes an actor. Surfaces have been marked, scratched, cracked, and seared, much like the terrain itself. The surface layers of these works are dynamic, balancing between the various states of the seasons. The random etching of the surface calls to task a questioning of materiality and value. The works fluctuate between rest and discontent. The preciousness of the objet d’art, as well as the peripheral landscape represented, is rediscovered like an artifact. The suggested neglect through time is salvaged, preserved, and displayed. The markings on the paintings, inconsistencies in the resin surface, and the unrefined finishing of the canvas structure allude to elements outside of the artist’s control. The result invokes a sense of abandon and a hint of a work in transition. As the paintings draw attention to areas of the landscape that can be considered “less than spectacular," they force the viewer to search for landmarks or meaning within the composition.
Many of my current works center on a specific tree, referencing dendrology and the specific genus of a tree. I single out a solitary tree and position it at eye level. There becomes an uncertainty as to the tree's dimension. Either we are close to it and it is small, or we are further away, and the tree happens to be massive. Regardless, our confrontation with the tree creates a focus that anthropomorphizes the tree itself. Much like a portrait, the tree is given value beyond an otherwise peripheral foliage existence." - Peter Hoffer
