Artist’s Statement
Notions of landscape inform my work. It is the idea of the landscape, its
romanticism that I am interested in. The paintings are not singular or
literal, but rather an accumulation of different time, light, desire,
reaction and remembrance. Memory becomes selective in recollection of
place. Time and process lead the paintings toward abstraction and an
awkward beauty.
Sources include idealized memory, pastoral scenes from art history and
single urban elements of the landscape (tree, sky). Color adds to the
fantastical and fictitiousness of the environment portrayed. The palette
is obsessively sweet, feminine, synthetic, saturated and false. Space is
illustrated and built with the physical surface of the painting.
Construction and deconstruction of this surface overrides overt
representation, building a place that is familiar and accessible, yet not
singularly pictorial. Landscape is recognized, but flattens quickly so
that the painting is realized as an object. This makes it more truthful
and specific to its existence as an object, a painting, and a unique
place, not a representation.
Michelle Bolinger
December 2010