In Two Worlds: the diptych landscapes

Art has a very elusive nature. On the one hand, it exists as a very concrete, physical thing made of paint, canvas, wood, or whatever material or medium the artist has chosen. On the other hand—and at the same time—it calls us to a place beyond our normal experience of the world, to a place we might call spiritual. Art seems to be the vehicle through which we unite and understand these two worlds. Through our experience of art, we experience our everyday world transformed and reimagined.

In this body of work, I am using the landscape as a metaphor for art’s—and the artist’s—role in unifying the human experience of the physical and spiritual worlds. To illustrate this idea, I have divided the landscape image along the horizon into two physically separate paintings: the lower half (earth), representing the physical realm, and the upper half (sky, the ‘heavens’) representing the metaphysical, or spiritual realm. These two parts, seen separately, appear flat and incomprehensible, but once brought together, they form an image that acquires an unexpected unity of light, depth and meaning. I find in this a fitting analogy to our experience of how, through our experience of art, the physical and spiritual worlds are brought together as one, each illuminating and clarifying the other.