I am leaving tomorrow morning to spend some time in Cooks Forest, Pennsylvania. Hopefully, I can get some great pictures of the trees, Allegheny River, and the surrounding forest landscape. After that I will be on my way home to get pictures of the oil refinary (with any luck I can get a picture without getting in trouble), the junkyard, and some beautiful farm land.

April Gornik

The West, 1986, Oil on canvas, 72" x 98"

Storm Sea, 2008, Oil on linen, 75" x 101"

April Gornik is an American landscape painter known for her dramatic paintings Storms and Fires. Storms and Fires is part of the Smithsonian American Art Museums art collection.

Gornick’s landscapes have big skies and lack people. They are so overpowering that they almost look surreal. She likes to think of herself as a conceptual artist. Her subject matter tends to be strange weather conditions. The landscapes have a luminescent quality and a unique use of color that gives them more emotional impact than the typical landscape. 

Like other landscape artists Gornik spends her time trying to get the word out about environmental issues. Gornik says, “My art is not necessarily made to inspire people to care about the environment, but I'd be very happy if it did have that effect. I think and worry about the environment and global warming CONSTANTLY.” 

Tom Chambers, Entropic Kingdom

Tom Chambers is a digital artist that creates photomontages that can be categorized as magic realism. Chambers is now based out of Richmond, Virginia. He is from Pennsylvania farm country, which can be seen as inspiration for some of his work.

Having grown up on a farm in Amish country Chambers has a unique perspective on the environment. He is very interested in preserving the environment that is inspiration for s much of his artwork. This the same farmland the famous Wyeth family painted so beautifully. 

Entropic Kingdom is Chambers ode to his life on a Pennsylvania farm and his fear of that life disappearing. The artist fears peoples disregard for the taking care of the environment will permanently harm the planet and the ecosystem. These images are of a disturbed ecosystem that were created my man.

Laurent Chehere, Flying Houses

Laurent Chehere is a French photographer who is best known for his commercial work with Audi and Nike. After leaving advertising Chehere traveled taking photographs along the way. The photographer was drawn to taking pictures of different types of houses. From these photographs came the series Flying Houses.

Each house has a story that the artist tries to tell through his artwork. He treats each house as individuals and tries to draw out the story that each house needs to tell. Even though the houses are photographed they have a very illustrious quality to them. That is because Chehere recreated them in Photoshop using multiple images thus creating a photomontage.The houses fly through the sky, yet some of them are firmly tethered to the ground. It looks like they are trying to escape the world they live in for a better world and life for the inhabitants. Chehere chose houses that were not in the best shape or the best part of town. These houses were the most likely to have inhabitants that needed an escape from the environment that they lived in.

Mitch Epstein, American Power Series, 2003-2009

Mitch Epstein, Amos Coal Power Plant, Raymond, West Virginia 2004

Mitch Epstein, BP Carson Refinery, California, 2007

Mitch Epstein is an American photographer that works in series of topics that he finds interesting or important. Epstein won the Prix Pictet in 2012 for his work on American Power. the Prix Pictet is an international photography award given to a photographer for environmentalism. 

For the series American Power, Epstein traveled across the United States in search of the impact of what creates energy in America. The series explores societies impact on the American landscape. He started at Cheshire, Ohio were the American Electric Power Company bought out the entire town and bulldozed it. The image of Amos Coal Plant is really someones backyard. someone lives there, has that view of the cooling towers, breathes the emissions from the towers, and if anything goes wrong will be that close to disaster. Epstein also has images of people playing football on a football field right next to another power plant. He realized that the effects of energy could be felt everywhere in the United States. Epstein also shows that even though it does damage, it also is people’s livelihoods. 

Maggie Taylor, Oh, Happy Day!; Evening Plunge; and Water Folly

Maggie Taylor, Oh Happy Day!, 2009

Maggie Taylor is an exciting digital collage artist. Her artwork has a surrealist nature with a dreamlike quality. I feel like I have discovered an artist who’s artistic vision meshes with the vision I have. The problem being mine is in my head; Taylor has made her vision a reality. Taylor inspires me to take the step from transferring the ideas in my head into an art piece. 

I find myself drawn to Taylor’s landscapes. The three pieces that are the most appealing to me are: Oh, Happy Day!; Evening Plunge; and Water Folly. Dreamy blues, greens, and yellows make up the color palette of Oh, Happy Day! There is a tree floating above a hole in the center of the composition. The roots are evident, like the tree has just been uprooted. For some magical reason the tree just hovers weightlessly above the ground. There is a ladder peaking out of the dark hole; it makes the viewer ask questions. Where does the hole lead? Who is in the hole? Fluffy clouds and rooted trees in the background keep the scene from becoming creepy. Another element that keeps the image as a dream are the butterflies that seem to be attracted to this magical event. There is a blurring or aged look to the perimeter of the work, it shows that whatever happens in Oh, Happy Day!  is definitely not reality. 

Maggie Taylor. Water Folly, 2007

Water Folly is a related piece that has a similar background landscape. It uses a muted version of the same colors, with some grays added in. This piece also uses a ladder, however, it has become the focal point. Next to the ladder is a tiny pool of water. It makes the viewer want to know who exactly is going to jump into the water, and how they are going to fit in that little pool. Floating above the ladder is a bluish purple butterfly that was seen in Oh, Happy Day! The background has turned into a backdrop like one that would be used in a photo shoot. That effect is created by dark cut outs along the sides and bottom of the backdrop. The piece also has the aged dreamlike look to it.

Maggie Taylor, Evening Plunge, 2007

The last landscape I looked at is Evening Plunge. As the title suggests this piece takes place in the evening, therefore it is darker in tone. It is made up of purples, blues, silvers, and blacks. The sky is alight with twinkling stars and a glowing moon. There are dark trees lower in background. The foreground is a body of water that reflects the sky and trees.  A ring of water is the focal point of the image. It again causes the viewer to ask questions. What kind of creature is swimming this late at night? What happened to them? The perimeter of image is darkened to give it a dreamy look similar to the other two pieces. It also appears that it has dark scratches on the surface, like one trying to recall a memory. 

Maggie Taylor’s images are strange and mysterious. They draw the viewer into her world. Once in this world it is hard to leave. It makes one want to stay longer, or at least create a parallel world where equally enchanting things can happen.

David Hockney, Yorkshire Landscapes, 1997-current

David Hockney, The Road Across the Wolds, 1997

David Hockney RA, Wheat Field near Fridaythorpe, August 2005

David Hockney is a painter, photographer, printmaker, and stage designer. He is considered one of the most influential British artists of the 20th century. Hockney spent most of his working life in California, but is now back home working on landscapes in Yorkshire.

In the summer of 1997, Hockney traveled to Yorkshire to see a friend who was dying. The travels inspired multiple landscapes of the countryside. The oil paintings were done in rich, bold colors. The landscapes were abstract, giving a quilt-like pattern to the farmland.  The artists creates the paintings en plein air. He prefers the what the eyes sees to the camera’s version of it. Every season the artist will paint the landscape and see how it changes. Hockney claims that, “Landscapes and portraits: what else is there?” He also claims that, “Trees in the winter are all individual, just as no face is like another.” 

I think what draws me to landscapes and Hockney are the same thing; individuality. With landscapes I can show how I see the landscape. Hockney sees his home of Yorkshire like no one else and portrays it as so. 

Pipo Nguyen-Duy: East of Eden, 2002-2006

Pipo Nguyen-Duy is a Vietnamese born photographer who immigrated to the United States as a political refugee. He earned a MFA in photography from the University of New Mexico, and now teaches photography at Oberlin College in Oberlin, Ohio. The East of Eden Series (2002-2006) photographs are staged to represent the United States of America as the Garden of Eden. The series is a representation of the American landscape post-9/11. It isn’t a pretty world. There are faults that are social as well as environmental. The image that stood out to me was the above image of a chair in a marsh. The image is very simple yet powerful. How did the chair get there? How long will it remain in the woods? The chair looks discarded and dejected in an unfriendly environment. It is an environment that is not meant to hold for this upholstered chair; it does not belong. It reminded me of growing up in the woods as a child. My father and I would find things like chairs discarded into the creek that ran behind our house. We would have to climb down the ravine and either rig a pulley system or follow the creek to lower ground to get the discarded material out. It showed the total disregard for people’s property and the environment. It is a reminder of how inconsiderate people can be.

Ben Goossens: Reborn

Surrealist artist and photographer Ben Goossens is an ex-directer that is from Belgium. He calls his award winning digital montages his “hobby.” Goossens started creating digital art after retiring from his 35 year career as an art director in advertising and already having 15 years of experience using photoshop. I am attracted to the surrealist aspect to his images. Surrealist digital art is what I want my senior seminar images to be. All of his images are very inspiring in the way each form is transformed into something else. The image Reborn takes a tree stump and has a square cut out of the center of it, with a tree being reborn into it. What I like the most about Reborn is that it is a positive message. The stump is not the end of the life cycle of the tree, because another tree is growing out of it. The solidness of the trunk lends itself to the dead, petrified appearance. The sparseness of the background and neutral colors bring the eye to the center of the image; the tree. The tree is green and healthy, it looks like it will last a long time. The tree also looks like a fruit tree, which would go with the theme of rebirth. 

Chris Jordan: Plastic Bottles, 2007

Chris Jordan is an environmental artist whose series, Running the Numbers: An American Self-Portrait, uses statistics to bring attention to a cause. He uses altered photography to show a a stunning visual story of the effects of mankind on the environment. At first glance the photograph, Plastic Bottles (2007), looks like random color textures. However, when the viewer looks up close she can see that the colors are in fact two million plastic bottles. Two million is the amount of bottles Americans use every five minutes. It is a startling and thought provoking image. It makes the viewer think twice about using or at least not recycling plastic bottles. In other work by the artist he depicts 426,000 cell phones to represent the amount of cell phones retired in the U.S. everyday, 1.14 million paper bags used in U.S. supermarkets every hour, and 28,000 42-gallon barrels of oil to represent the amount of oil consumed in the U.S. every two minutes. Th artist states that, "Statistics can feel abstract and anesthetizing...this project visually examines these vast and bizarre measures of our society. My underlying desire is to emphasize the role of the individual in a society that is increasingly enormous, incomprehensible and overwhelming."

Tomás Sánchez, Landscapes and Landfill Paintings

Tomás Sánchez is an important and celebrated Cuban artist. The artist is best known for his landscape paintings, but he also sculpts and works with photography. Exhibitions in over 30 countries, including Mexico, the United States, Japan, Italy, and France have shown work done by the artist.

Sanchez’s landscape paintings show his love of a nature lost to man. This is a nature that is untouched by the hand of man. Sanchez paints completely from imagination since the island of Cuba has been almost completely deforested for centuries. A huge influence for Sanchez was the Hudson River School. The artist adds a spiritual element like the painters from the Hudson River School, but his comes from meditation and yoga instead of from Stylistically, the paintings of Sanchez are far removed from Romanticism, they have a dreamlike surreal look. 

Basurero en la playa - 1991 

While living in Mexico, Sanchez did a series of landfill paintings. Mexico’s overflowing landfills served as inspiration for the paintings. The above painting is very much in the style I would like to work in. I like that he uses a beautiful landscape and shows how it is destroyed by the landfill. It shows what is lost and what can be regained.