23 May 2008
Cook inlet panorama : sun, air, water and rock tectonics
Started work at last. Working up a series of studies of the fluid landscape. Sun, water and air, three out of the four alchemists elements.
On reflection this seems perverse in a landscape so dominated by the presence of such vast scale and weight. As a kid I used to imagine that cloud shapes were really mountains, just outside London. You don’t have to do that here, there are real mountains on every edge of town. But all this mass is deceptive, and far from static. We are sitting right on the most seismically active area in the N America. This is a subduction zone where one continental land mass slides under another. There are over 23,000 earthquakes a year here, 150 since 4 pm. yesterday afternoon.
The mountains here are as fluid as the sea and the air, if you watch them for long enough. That’s enough words. Here’s the pictures.
(1) 23 May 2008 at 6:51 am
Steve
Humans have evolved to operate on a particular scale. That’s why we perceive objects as solid when they are 99.999% nothing. It’s why we can’t see tectonic plates moving - our instruments are tuned to a different timescale. Maybe you need to retune! Evolve a little. That might take a few days…
(2) 23 May 2008 at 6:06 pm
doug
Retuning is exactly what I’m trying to do - I ind that the best thing to ground my nd stop me talking is to satrt drawing. I somehow go into glacier speed thinking then, which is just the ticket
(3) 1 June 2008 at 10:36 am
lisa tc
wow - wonderful loose work - i love the idea that the mountains are as fluid as the sea… i could stare at them for hours…
(4) 1 June 2008 at 6:09 pm
doug
Hey Lisa - so great to hear from you - to hear a familiar voice in a big place. The staring thing is my main strategy with a job this scary - mostly thinking “how could anything be that big ..?” But I want to know how your painting job is going in North Carolina. That sounds really interesting - did you get to hear any music ? I don’t know much about that mountain music but you can always recognise it when you hear it. Just found out that John Coltraine and Thelonious Monk came from there too, how cool is that ! xxdoug