Field and Stream

"The work that has gone into Field and Stream has been marked by a period of experimentation with representations of the landscape. A series of smaller works gradually led into larger works. Some variety is present, as different concepts have emerged in the process.

"Initially the paintings were saturated fields of shape and line moving through the picture plane, and eventually a space more representative of a figure /ground /viewer experience emerged. As this progressed I began to look at historical images. I was particularly moved by the landscapes of Peter Paul Rubens, and as the seasons changed here, local views became informed by this work.

"The paintings as a group have varying degrees of representation and are meditations on some of the many associative ideas that “landscape” can conjure. This has led to various iterations on the theme, inspired by different preoccupations and concerns, material challenges: the energy and potential in line, the specific sensations of colour, as ground, as object, as layer, as network or circuit, the potential in texture as surface, as a place of visual absorption with its own relative sense of distance and light, with it its inherent sense of place and interior network, as volume and sculptural component framing the illusion of space, depth and flatness, the constant interplay between feeling a sense of actual space emerging and recognition of the limitations of surface, which along with the sensation of compositional movement start to determine more metaphysical and psychological ideas.

"How do we bring a sense of presentness or consciousness to imagery? What suggests the humming of cognition? Ritualized space, direct and assertive gesture, the hinting at and denying of perceptual space and experience - all are in some way contained in and determined by the material possibilities of paint.

"The title Field and Stream came about in casual conversation as I tried to suggest how this recent work differed from previous imagery which used the urban environment as a starting point. The idea of Field and Stream, as ways of looking and categorizing the sensation evoked by painting seem apropos in a way. Fields of paint, perspectival space, planar articulation, bounded fields of experience, grounds of colour, and in turn being, streams of consciousness, streams of paint and streams of view are my immediate connections to how movement and the beauty of nature are present in so many different ways."

Gary Evans, June 2013