Painting between landscape and memory
A painting often begins before the brush touches the surface. It starts on a walk, in the way a hill darkens under a passing cloud, By the time I am in the studio, the place itself has already changed. What remains is a mixture of forms, weather, mood, and memory.
My art practice sits in that space between observation and recollection. I look closely at the land around me, but I do not want to record it like a map. I am more interested in what stays with me after I leave: a broken line of trees, the pale edge of morning light, the deep blue that appears at dusk, the weight of a shoreline under grey sky.
I paint from these impressions. Sometimes it is clear and bright. Sometimes it is fragmented. The work grows out of both.
The landscape is never still
The places around me keep changing, even when they seem familiar. A field I pass every week can feel open and spare in winter, then crowded with grasses by late summer. A stand of trees can look gentle in morning light and severe by evening. Water can be reflective one day and completely opaque the next.
That movement matters to my work. I return to certain places, but I never really return to the same scene. The weather has shifted. The season has turned. My own attention has changed too.
I often notice small transitions more than grand views:
A road shoulder where weeds catch late light
The flat color of the waves before rain
The shapes of branches against a pale sky
The way shadows gather at the edge of a path
These details do not always appear in the final painting in a direct way. A branch may become a scratch of charcoal. A shoreline may turn into a dark band across the canvas. A low cloud may become a rubbed area of grey, blue, or green.
The point is not to reproduce the view. The point is to stay close to the feeling of having seen it.
That is where memory enters. Memory edits. It removes some things and exaggerates others. It can make a color stronger, a shape stranger, or a distance feel larger than it was. In the studio, I try to let that happen without forcing it. If the painting becomes too literal, I step back. If it drifts too far from the original sensation, I look again at sketches, notes, or photographs, not to copy them, but to return to the first impulse.
My studio practice begins with looking
I think of looking as part of the making. Before a painting begins, I gather impressions. This can happen while walking, driving along rural roads, sitting near water, or standing at the edge of a park after the weather changes.
I use a mix of quick notes, loose sketches, and phone photographs. None of these are finished works. They are reminders.
A note might say:
“Dark trees against yellow grass. Low sky. The field feels wider than it looks.”
That kind of sentence can be more useful than a polished drawing. It tells me what mattered in the moment. It gives me something to return to when the painting starts to lose direction.
In the studio, I usually begin with loose marks. I do not want the surface to feel too controlled too soon. I build the painting in layers, often scraping back, covering, and redrawing. A strong painting needs room for uncertainty. If every decision is fixed at the start, the work can feel closed.
The first layer might be thin and washy. The next might be heavier, with thicker paint or a dry dragged mark. I may turn the canvas, block out a section, or erase an area that begins to feel too descriptive. The process is physical. It involves looking, responding, and correcting.
There is also a kind of listening involved. A painting often tells me when I have overworked one area or ignored another. A small mark can shift the balance of the whole surface. A field of color can pull everything into a different season. A dark shape can suddenly become a hill, a shadow, or a memory of trees.
The best moments happen when the painting stops feeling like a plan and starts feeling like a place.
Memory changes the scale of things
When I paint from memory, scale becomes flexible. A small stone can carry the weight of a whole shoreline. A narrow path can feel like the centre of the painting. A cloud can become a wall.
This does not mean the work becomes abstract in a careless way. It means the painting follows emotional proportion rather than strict measurement. Some parts grow because they mattered more. Other parts fall away because they were only background.
This is one reason I am drawn to the space between landscape and abstraction. A painting can hold the trace of a hill, water, weather, or trees without naming them too clearly. It can stay open. It can allow the viewer to bring their own memory to it.
I like paintings that shift as you spend time with them. From across the room, they may suggest a horizon. Up close, they may become marks, layers, stains, and edges. That movement between image and surface feels honest to me. It reflects how memory works. We remember a place as a whole, then in fragments.
The role of color and weather
Color is one of the main ways I connect landscape to memory. I rarely use color exactly as it appears. I use it as a form of recall.
A grey sky may become greenish. A shadow may lean purple. A field may hold a red undertone that was never visible in a literal sense, but feels true to the day. The painting begins to build its own weather.
Weather is more than subject matter. It affects the mood of the surface. A clear day may call for sharper edges and cleaner contrasts. Fog may ask for soft transitions and buried forms. Rain can lead to downward marks, blurred edges, and a heavier atmosphere.
A color may come back before a shape. A temperature may return before a view. The feeling of being there may be clearer than the details.
This is especially true in the Canadian seasons, where light can change the meaning of a place so completely. Snow simplifies forms. Spring exposes everything. Summer fills the eye with growth. Autumn sharpens edges and deepens colo. The same road, field, or stretch of water can become four different subjects across the year.
There is a practical side to this too. Paint behaves differently depending on how it is handled. Thin paint can feel like mist or distance. Thick paint can feel like ground. Scraped paint can suggest erosion, movement, or time. A dry brush can leave a broken mark that feels close to grass, bark, or cloud without becoming any one of them.
These material choices carry meaning. They let the painting hold both image and process.
The Shifting Horizons, oil painting ©2026
Finding a balance between control and surprise
Every painting asks for a different balance. Too much control can make the work feel stiff. Too much openness can make it lose focus. I try to stay alert to both risks.
There are days when I need to slow down and make careful decisions. There are other days when the painting needs energy, speed, or risk. I may cover an area I liked because it no longer belongs. I may keep an awkward mark because it gives the painting life.
This can be uncomfortable. There is always a moment when the work feels unresolved, when I cannot yet tell whether it is becoming stronger or falling apart. I have learned not to rush past that stage. Often, that uncertainty is where the painting begins to find its own structure.
I ask simple questions as I work:
Where does the eye enter?
What feels too certain?
What feels too empty?
Where is the light coming from?
What memory started this painting?
What has the painting become on its own terms?
These questions keep me connected to both the original place and the object in front of me. A painting cannot remain only an idea. It has to work as a surface, with its own rhythm, weight, and presence.
Why I keep returning to place
I return to landscape because it gives me a way to think about time. The land holds change without announcing it. Ice forms and disappears. Leaves fall and return. Water rises, darkens, clears, and freezes. Paths wear down slowly. Light moves across the same surfaces again and again.
Painting lets me respond to that movement in a personal way. The work becomes a record, not of one exact view, but of attention over time.
This is why memory matters so much. Memory is not a flaw in the process. It is part of the subject. The remembered place, with all its gaps and shifts, often feels closer to lived experience than a direct copy would.
When I think about my practice now, I see it as a conversation between three things:
The place
The material
The memory
What I saw, felt, and carried back with me
What the paint, surface, and marks allow
What changes, fades, returns, or insists on staying
The painting exists where those things meet.
Staying open to what the work becomes
I do not want my paintings to close too quickly. I want them to hold the trace of a place, but also the uncertainty of remembering. I want the viewer to sense weather, space, and time without being told exactly where they are.
The landscapes around me continue to offer more than I can use. A cold morning, a wet road, a line of trees after snow, a field under a low sky. These are ordinary things, but they keep asking for attention.
My practice grows from these encounters. I walk, look, remember, paint, scrape back, begin again. Each work becomes part observation and part invention. Part place and part echo.
The task is not to capture the land once and for all. The task is to keep returning with care, and to let memory leave its marks.
What other artworks have taught me
Visits throughout the Fall to the The Beaverbrook gallery in Fredericton, the Iceberg Contemporary Art in Moncton and Mitote Gallery in Saint John.
Looking at other artists’ work is part of my practice too. I do not see it as separate from making. When I visit a gallery, an exhibition, or even a small local show, I pay attention to what slows me down.
Sometimes it is a large painting that holds the room through color and scale. Sometimes it is a modest work on paper with one confident line. I have seen pieces where the surface felt weathered, almost like stone or bark. I have seen paintings where a simple shift from warm to cool color created a sense of distance. I have stood in front of works that reminded me how little is needed when every mark matters.
What I value most is not technical display, though skill can be beautiful. I am moved by work that feels necessary. Work where I can sense the artist making choices with care. Work that leaves some space for the viewer.
Seeing other artwork has also taught me to trust restraint. A painting does not need to explain everything. A quiet area can carry as much force as a dense one. An unfinished edge can feel more alive than a polished border. A limited palette can open more possibilities than a crowded one.
The artwork I see by others reminds me to look harder, risk more, and leave room for quiet. It reminds me that painting can hold presence without explanation.
In some exhibitions, I find myself drawn less to the obvious centrepiece and more to the pieces that reveal themselves slowly. A pale drawing. A small panel. A painting with a strange, unresolved corner. These works remind me that attention is a form of generosity. They ask for time, and they give something back when I offer it.
Good artwork changes the way I return to my own studio. It can loosen a habit, sharpen a question, or remind me that doubt is part of the process. It does not give me answers. It helps me ask better questions.
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