Gallery Paintings: Landscapes
All of these paintings have been done from sketches and photographs taken with the
camera GPS turned off. After completing each painting, I “drive” in Google Maps Street
View and attempt to find the site again. It is always a surprise. Some sites that seem like
they should be documented by Google Maps are not. Buildings that have been moved
recently do not show up in their new locations. Some photos on Google Maps are recent.
Others are several years old and may look quite different from the current reality. And, in
general, since Google Street View images are shot from a camera mounted on a moving car
shooting everything with equal attention, many sites do not look like anything you would
even think of stopping for. The unexpected benefit of the search is that I get to repeat all
my vacations for free, drive the roads again, and remember even the things that I did not
photograph. I have taken about 30 of these “virtual vacations” to date and I highly
recommend it as a form of entertainment and a memory aid.
I became interested in Native American pictographs and petroglyphs when I was
researching the world-wide use of masks and noticed recurring symbols in many pre
literate cultures. The pictograms carved and painted by the natives of North America
were an image based language capable of communicating to a wide audience.
Today their meaning is a mystery. But sometimes, when I am painting and totally
focused on the symbols, they begin to speak to me.