RAM: The Open Book

Not landscape paintings, or landscape photographs, but landscapes in reality. Landscapes that change from day to day, from minute to minute. Watching how the depth and color of the land are affected by the light. Watching the fog roll between the branches of the trees. Watching the waves crash for hours on end. Landscapes are a living thing through which we perceive them to be still. Like a vase of flowers. Like a bowl of fruit. Landscapes move and breathe, sometimes even heave with emotional fury. They burn and cry and speak to us. Landscapes in paintings are but a portrait, captured as if they were a person caught in a daydream, caught in a momentary stillness, caught in a second of life.

“Your Holiness must forgive his offense, because he offended through ignorance. Painters, outside of their art, are like that.”

Piero Soderini in trying to sate the anger of Pope Julius II re: Michelangelo’s failure to appear for a meeting when summoned.
Michelangelo and the Pope’s Ceiling, by Ross King

Actually, I studied photography in Pittsburgh. I learned to see in that dirty little town. Through my camera lens I learned to see the difference between light and dark, black and white, contrasts in living and in everyday life. Full color meant full throttle and I was not yet there. I was green. I was young. My eyes were only beginning to open. I learned to watch and observe. I became a voyeur. I felt the seasons go by and paced them by the appearance and disappearance of the leaves on the trees. Click. I watched the flow of the rivers and the flames shoot to the sky from the few remaining steel mills that sat on their banks. I climbed its hills, walked its bridges. Click. I swung from the trees on rope swings. I studied the wildlife of the streets, watched the people coming and going, sitting and eating, young and old. Click. I explored abandoned buildings and thrift shops. I studied faces as they ate lunch at Jimmy Miller’s Bar. I watched snow fall. I found character in the faces of my fellow students. Click.

Other artists also lived and studied there.

Other artists also went on their way.