Question reply with Shane McAdams...

Sophie,

Sorry for the delay. Let me know that these work.

Text below.

I grew up in the Southwestern U.S. and was visually taken by the sculpted topography as a kid – how the layered strata of the rock formations came to be exposed by erosion from wind and water, and the incremental and chaotic effects of time and climate could conspire to create something more orderly than I could with my own hands.

Though flirting with both representation and abstraction, my work is concerned primarily with how society interprets the idea of landscape. Over the years, landscape painting has leaned on conventions and formulas to represent 'nature.' I always thought that these formulas undermined the idea of the real natural, and bet that something more fundamental could be captured with forces that directly shape the nature we walk in: wind, gravity, time, heat, etc.. Thus I saw my process-based abstract work as being more 'natural' than, say, a painting of the Grand Canyon or Niagara Falls.

The forms in my work are analogs or traces of the methods of their creation. They take root in the physical properties inherent within specific, mundane materials such as PVA glue, correction fluid, ballpoint pen ink and resin, whose limits are stretched by subjecting them to non-traditional applications. The complexity of the forms created from these processes belies the simplicity of their creation. This is by choice processes reflect the physical forces that are constantly working to fashion and sculpt the natural landscape, and, by bracketing them with hand-rendered, ‘traditional’ images of landscape, I hope to evoke the duality between the actual and the artificial and force the viewer to question notions of what we consider organic and what is synthetic.

ARTIST STATEMENT

My work is about landscape in the broadest sense of the term. I grew up with the desert southwest as a backdrop and was visually taken by its sculpted topography – how the layered strata of the rock formations came to be exposed by erosion from wind and water, and the incremental and chaotic effects of time and climate could conspire to create something more orderly than I could with my own hands.

Since, my art has resumed a focus on landscape, reflecting the dueling relationships between natural and synthetic forms. These forms are often analogs or traces of the methods of their creation. They take root in the physical properties inherent within specific, mundane materials such as PVA glue, correction fluid, ballpoint pen ink and resin, whose limits are stretched by subjecting them to non-traditional applications, generating structures whose complexity belies the simplicity of their creation. These processes reflect the physical forces that are constantly working to fashion and sculpt the natural landscape, and, by bracketing them with hand-rendered, ‘traditional’ images of landscape, I hope to evoke the duality between the actual and the artificial and force the viewer to question notions of what we consider organic and what is synthetic.