Sensescapes are paintings that involve more than an image of an object that the artist is seeing or has seen. They involve the full scope of sensations that the artist has had or is feeling during the event about which he is painting. Most paintings involve only the visual sense of the artist. He paints what he sees, such as a figure, a vista or a still life arrangement for example. Sensecapes although abstract in style, through the use of colors, forms and arrangement, they express the feelings and emotions, passion and touch, the nature of the interpersonal relationship and all other sensations that are part of the experience about which the painting is created.
In sensescapes, color and texture are used to express the heat of the day or the coolness of the night. Form is employed to illustrate passion with a blending of colors to express the intensity of the event. Vertical striations of color of varying widths are employed to express the mood and to separate the episodes of the experience. Texture, impasto and mixed medium are also employed to emphasize the strength of the emotion and the complexity of the sensations.
Life is full of a multitude of events, most of which are unimportant elements of living. Others are strong in emotion and passion, happy or sad, and they stay with you in the recesses of your memory. Often they come out when you least expect or want them, to keep you awake at night wishing that you had acted differently, better handled the event or not spoke those words that you still remember saying. Some occasions you bring out yourself. Those are the memories of happy, successful, loving and passionate times. They stand out like islands in the sea, and they are few and far between. But you coax them out of your memory to fight the darkness of depression or unhappiness that weighs you down at days end. You can live again the happiness, feel the warmth and passion, the deep sensation of the experience that has brightened your life.
When I create a sensescape painting , I focus my concentration on the feelings that I had experienced during the event about which I am painting. In my preparation of the design of the forms and the determination of the colors, I relive the past and feel again the sensations that I felt during the event. An occasion that was intense enough that its memory took root in my being.
The idea for sensescape paintings, was conceived in the 1970’s, while on a holiday in the Greek Islands. However, sensescape paintings embody a painting style that I have developed only over the last few years. These paintings have a special meaning for me because they represent the sensations or feelings that I had of during or after events that I have experienced at some time and place in the past, which were significant enough to create lasting memories. They involve the surroundings or environment at the time, the mood that I was in, the interpersonal relationship that I may have been having at the time and the sensations from what I may have been doing that gave me pleasure or pain. Simply they represent all the sensations, that I may have experienced during the event of which I have any memory. Of course they are abstract, but in the colors and forms that I employ, I attempt to express those sensations. I have lived through a lot of experiences in my life, so my memories provide me with a rich source of inspiration for these sensescapes.
