Landscape and belonging.

I think that it is good sometimes as a painter to sit back a little and take a second look at what how and why I paint. A sort of refocus or re assessment. This is my second blog entry that looks at Landscape and belonging. I was influenced by a discussion that I heard on BBC radio 4. The English word landscape comes from the 5th Century anglo saxon word landscaef  and was used to  describe a place where human action had changed a location ie field systems or strip linchets, drainage etc. The term Landscape as in landscape painting came along much later in the 16th Century  borrowed from the Dutch Painters, landchap. I also see landscape as a cultural geographic name. Influenced by a couple of excellent teachers at St Mary's College Blackburn  I became engrossed in the subject, especially geomorphology from my mid teens. Now, looking back I can see why I have always been reluctant to put figures into my landscape paintings and instead I have tried to focus on the meaning of the Land itself and how it has been shaped if at all, by animals or humans or the weather. For me the Land is an entity, a living thing, for it to exist and grow and prosper it doesn't need humans in fact I have to say we humans are the lands worst nightmare. 

Largely humans are an irrational complex and wasteful enemy of nature. We wage war against the defenceless, glorify in our conquest of weakness and rape the land for profit.. We celebrate killing the means of our survival on this planet and trivialize the slaughter of our own. But you only have to stand in the cold winds of winter  on the open moor to realise that we need land more than it needs us.