John Ruskin (1819 -1900)
the reverie of landscape
Our artistic practice is concerned with the process
of deep and sustained observation, exploring the universal human experience
of what it means to allow one’s gaze to be fully absorbed
by what we see. Our work is deeply inspired by John Ruskin's ideas on the
nature of observation and is often created as a result of journeys into
natural landscapes. The process of travel to a site, of arriving and sinking
into a deep mindfulness of the landscape and of our own presence within
it, echoes an ancient connection; a sense of stillness, isolation, insignificance,
joyful reverie or spiritual force. We gaze, as many people have done, upon
a landscape, while experiencing a slowly emerging distillation of images
and colours, associations and meanings.
reflections on the way we see
"The
greatest thing a human soul ever does is to see something, and tell what
it saw in a plain way. Hundreds of people can talk for one who can think,
but thousands can think for one who can see. To see clearly is poetry, prophecy
and religion, all in one"
John
Ruskin
As consciousness begins to break down our view into smaller and smaller details, we may begin to experience an indefinable identification or emotional connection with smaller elements; a swirling pool, a pattern of light reflected upon a rock, a moving leaf, a single petal. We may instead find our consciousness widens to accommodate a total perception, becoming completely absorbed by overwhelming yet childlike impressions of colour and light. We might experience extreme clarity, vitality and a vivid sense of physical engagement that demands our participation, our actual physical communication with a place. We may even lose the ability to interpret what we see, becoming unseeing, inward, reflective, non-existent. There is a fascinating mystery in all these experiences of prolonged observation that deeply informs our work.
connections to others and
the world of art
"I
would rather teach drawing that my pupils would learn to love nature, than
teach the looking at nature that they may learn to draw"
John
Ruskin, Elements of Drawing 1857
The great Victorian critic John Ruskin
possessed a remarkable power of visual concentration and acuity. We believe
that his ability to see deeply, perhaps more than anything else, underpins
his genius. In old age, Ruskin recalled an incident at Fontainebleau in
1842 which he invested with perception-changing significance:
"I found myself lying on the bank of a cart-road in the sand, with
no prospect whatever but a small aspen tree against a blue sky. Languidly,
but not idly, I began to draw it and as I drew; the languor passed away:
the beautiful lines insisted on being traced, without weariness. More and
more the beautiful they became, as each rose out of the rest, and took its
place in the air. With wonder increasing every instant, I saw that they
'composed' themselves, by finer laws than any known to man. At last the
tree was there and everything that I had thought before about trees, nowhere."
John Ruskin
We are drawn to the idea of how other artists in creating particular artworks have somehow offered deeper meaning to particular places. Equally the act of almost ritual observation that artists carried out, often sustained over extended periods of time, has acted as an inspiration to us in the process of creating our works. We are particularly interested in those artists who have spent considerable time observing specific sites. From Durer, observing a clump of grass, to Turner, being strapped to the mast of ship to experience the eye of a storm, Bruce Nauman observing his own studio, James Turrell's observations of a volcano, or the art of Zen calligraphy: it is through this ritualised act of observation and mindfulness that a heightened distillation of meaning is transferred to the final image. Maybe it is this that universally connects us all to the world of art.
the creation of our landscape work - digital canvases and dioramas
These are not new themes, they are so ancient and universally felt that they long ago moved beyond the realm of ideas and concepts. To interpret them through artistic practice began with cave-art and, with painting, had its epiphany in Turner. The medium through which we work, primarily high definition digital video, now offers us new ways of exploring these ancient themes. Through the on-site recording of time, movement and sound, of millions of individual images, starts a second process of distillation. In making our work, we are aware that any landscape is only a pattern of light, colour and sound registered through our senses; it is by engaging the filter of our mind and memory that understanding, sense and meaning are created. So we do not primarily seek to represent a captured image of the landscape, but equally to communicate certain truths of our inner personal experience of it. It is through the secondary creative process of editing that much of this happens, through selection from many hours of recorded material, and certain manipulations of time, light, colour and sound.
Richard Ashrowan & Alexander Hamilton
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