The Figure in Landscape This is a series to which I return every five to ten years. It is a recurring theme begun in college. It was the 70's: I was young, exploring life, myself, relationships, connections, paths I might explore as a woman and artist. Life drawing and anatomy are an integral part of any artist's education. My experience in drawing class profoundly affected me both in skill training and in an awareness of the body as structure and yet connected with nature. The human body is chemically no different than any other living element. It is united with nature in the most elemental way. What does separate humans from nature is our awareness and intelligence. For good or ill, we humanize everything, putting our mark upon every aspect of existence. We create a rationale for living. As I continued to explore the body in class, I began to see shape relationships between the body and nature. There is a universal "soft triangle" that recurs throughout the natural world. There are contours that repeat. In drawing the landscape of the body, the image becomes the landscape within which the body exists.The body becomes the landscape of a discrete world- a physical union of flesh and nature, inseparable but still discrete. As I made each image, another layer of awareness became apparent. The rationalization of meaning: the personalizing narrative created by the mind to make sense of everything. This dovetailed with my personal growth and experiences. My relationship with the world, emotions, and awareness of myself colored the content creating a very personal confession. As we never cease "becoming", this subject resurrects itself perhaps in answer to new experiences or challenges as my life progresses.
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