Freya Grand
Pu’u O’o
Oil on canvas
48″ x 60″
2016
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Artist Statement
The landscape is a potent source of meaning, offering an opening into the vastness of the universal, triggering a very personal and fundamental recognition.
When I travel to untouched parts of the earth where there is no sign of the hand of man, I am compelled by the large geological patterns and structures, the skin and the bones of the earth. I want to observe how desert mountain slopes are overcome by slow drifting sand, to see how green valleys morph into arid flats, how crevices follow the direction of fault lines. I want to feel the updrafts and temperature changes that echo the contours of the earth below and see the shifting edges of geological forces. The blanket of cloud that envelops a mountain peak is symbolic of the moving edge of life.
My paintings have a strong sense of place and yet they are not realistic. Although descriptive, they do not reproduce the visual record so much as the experiential one. They inhabit a territory that lies between abstraction and realism. We all carry our own inner immensity. I have discovered that mine is called into being by standing on the rim of a rock and looking outward.
