NEW HAMPSHIRE
An Asian Sensibility
MARY GRAHAM, Mokuhanga Prints:
MARY GRAHAM, FRAMED OILS:
In my paintings, I try to capture a sense of the passage of time, an extended experience of presence and attention. The desire to see, know and understand the natural world more intimately draws me into the mountains and woods, into relationship with the wonderful “otherness” of nature. I know what John Muir meant when he stated, “The clearest way into the Universe is through a forest wilderness.”
By focussing on the particular, alert to sounds, sights, and fragrances, I come to know my environment to be deeply inhabited by living things and feel myself a part of this symbiotic kinship. Each place has its own very specific and individual attributes, a feeling well expressed by the poet Novalis: “A landscape must be felt like a body. Every landscape is an ideal body for a particular kind of spirit.” Balancing these two forms of attention, I search for the poetry of a given place.
My working process has always included painting and drawing outdoors, which is the foundation for all that follows. My paintings are created from these experiences and memories, searching for visual metaphors for the complexity of human thought in relation to place, to landscape, and to nature. I find beauty in the tensions and oppositions of this dynamic relationship.
By focussing on the particular, alert to sounds, sights, and fragrances, I come to know my environment to be deeply inhabited by living things and feel myself a part of this symbiotic kinship. Each place has its own very specific and individual attributes, a feeling well expressed by the poet Novalis: “A landscape must be felt like a body. Every landscape is an ideal body for a particular kind of spirit.” Balancing these two forms of attention, I search for the poetry of a given place.
My working process has always included painting and drawing outdoors, which is the foundation for all that follows. My paintings are created from these experiences and memories, searching for visual metaphors for the complexity of human thought in relation to place, to landscape, and to nature. I find beauty in the tensions and oppositions of this dynamic relationship.
"October Dawn"
Oil on linen on panel, 24" x 30"
Oil on linen on panel, 24" x 30"
"Sea of Clouds
Oil on linen on panel, 24" x 30"
Oil on linen on panel, 24" x 30"
"I’ve lived in the country long enough to know its wild joys: it feels like I’m a child back home in my old village again..
Leaving the city today, I put all that gritty dust behind me,
and facing mountains and valleys, feel them enter my eyes."
WANG AN-SHIH (1021 - 1086)
Translation by David Hinton
Leaving the city today, I put all that gritty dust behind me,
and facing mountains and valleys, feel them enter my eyes."
WANG AN-SHIH (1021 - 1086)
Translation by David Hinton
