Think Draw - Picture - What Landscape?

Title: What Landscape?
created on 25 May 12

Please login to rate or comment:

Comments on this picture (53):
1. chelydra wrote: John Muir and Fred Olmsted were both responsible for rethinking what a landscape should be â€” with opposite answers....
2. AFSOUTH wrote: I really love this one chelydra! These guys are brilliant!
3. chelydra wrote: Muir was the Grandfather of All Tree-Huggers, and was largely responsible for keeping vast tracts of (more-or-less) wild nature safe (more-or-less) forever in National Parks...
4. chelydra wrote: Olmsted's New York Central Park was not conserved but constructed. For years, rocks and hills were moved around until everything was just where it belonged.
5. chelydra wrote: In both cases, the human occupants had to go. People had no place in 19th Century ideal landscapes, even if their ancestors were there since the dawn of time.
6. chelydra wrote: (While Muir and Olmsted were conserving/constructing their wonderful parks in America, Victorian industrialists were buying up old castles in the Scottish Highlands...
7. five wrote: wonderful
8. chelydra wrote: ...and erasing the ancient villages that dotted the hills, sending their inhabitants to the slums of Glasgow or England).
9. clorophilla wrote: Fantastic - I have to try seriously a portrait in Space!
10. chelydra wrote: (The villages were eyesores.)
11. chelydra wrote: Thankx for comments.
12. farout wrote: What a wonderful work of art I also love the story. :)
13. lesley_gene wrote: Fantastic images. Thanks for the info...sad, to me the villages give the landscape character.
14. chelydra wrote: I think one reason "environmentalism" has been such a catastrophic failure is that it inherited that idea of Nature as something disconnected from us, to be saved or remade, basically for aesthetic reasons...
15. chelydra wrote: ...to be enjoyed, as one might enjoy an outing with a "sex worker" â€” but it's the wife/husband/kids you'd die for if they were in danger...
16. chelydra wrote: ...because you OWN them, and THEY also OWN YOU. It's mutual possession. That's how it was with people and landscapes...
17. chelydra wrote: ...People's Park 1969 gave birth to the ecology movement. Earth Day 1970 ended it. It lasted under a year. Study those 2 events and you'll see the difference between ecology & environment, between "landscape" and Nature.
18. chelydra wrote: ...so (to bring all this back to the subject) while Muir and Olmsted did great things, they also both helped negate a far greater thing, humanity embedded in and co-evolving with nature.
19. Normal wrote: But I'm glad they both did their versions of this vision. "Evolving" humanity tends to disregard it all. Too many people; not enough trees for my money. (Neat portraits!)
20. Hazer wrote: I love "watching you draw". chelydra, because I would never be able to produce anything like it. :) And the history lessons are always appreciated, too.
21. chelydra wrote: (Of course people have been the most invasive and devastating of all species, but the solution is to FIT IN and give back more than we take out. Easier said than done!)
22. Burgandy wrote: His eyes are misty - like he has lived and seen a lot!
23. danila wrote: wow.great and impressive work..as always..i love your reported debate and totally agree with your conclusions...
24. nancylee wrote: Chelydra - your painting is wonderful, but your history and analysis in this format even more so. I am looking forward to seeing the codependence you suggest in future drawings.
25. okeanos wrote: PERFECT!!!!
26. indigo wrote: LOVE your art and I REALLY enjoy the info and history you give with it!
27. terra wrote: Love to read all of what you are saying, writing - since I first have read your comments. I can feel an unique rhythm and power in your words. And then Ive to think about the difference between "real" and "authentic".:)
28. Miulo wrote: Wonderful portrait! Really enjoy the history you told us!
29. bluemoon wrote: I have no space left in space.. for this as a much wanted favorite. But I think it is awesome.
30. suzze wrote: :)
31. Shanley wrote: once again...brilliant!
32. Qsilv wrote: Your work is instantly recognizable! Your commentary's the added dimension that holds me... now tho, dammit, I'm sooo tempted to draw here... figures integrated... ;>
33. chelydra wrote: Thanks, but Q, the faces were supposed to be a perfect yin-yang with spiraling white beards and locked-together facing profiles. It really would have been a masterpiece. But this will do.
34. chelydra wrote: I'm tempted to do it over the way it was supposed to be... will probably resist
35. Qsilv wrote: 24"x84" on Bristol (or Coquille) with foliage details so fine they're only visible in raking light...
36. chelydra wrote: I love your comments, Q - been too few and far between of late
37. nancylee wrote: Thanks for your comments chelydra - and you must have gone wayyyy back. I doubt that picture was my first. I have been a member for a long time and I know I have deleted things along the way.
38. Qsilv wrote: heh.. you realize I meant for YOU to work on that size panel ;>
39. chelydra wrote: oh - just noticed the 84" bit... my goodness... but why just 24" the other way?
40. Qsilv wrote: It's said that Asian screens are drawn back just a bit so you look out at a narrow slice of nature encompassing low earth, middle hills, high sky... French architectural proportions are oddly pleasing that way too... tall and narrow.
41. chelydra wrote: took your advice, thanks, but left out the people.
42. hanging wrote: Thank you for your inspirational pic and description. It is...really...I'd question about what "landscape" is and your words have relieved me as "it's okay to question"
43. marg wrote: stunning..... and awesome
44. clorophilla wrote: Don't know how missed to comment this. The eyes are alive and your debate about "ladscape" very appropriate and very ispirational. I agree at all! Appreciate also the idea of the jin-yang double portrait and hope tou'll do it again. Wish I would hade more
45. clorophilla wrote: ...FAVs!
46. gimzer wrote: Pardon my not reading this, I was too busy looking at the art
47. hjjr wrote: great
48. Chrissyjoy wrote: I'm not sure how I missed this. You continue to educate us all, thank you!
49. methusalinka wrote: hej Again and:sorry if you want to tell me a lot in saying do not make those pair of eyes let them not be praying such an open human prair how can I who see them listen to your words when there where they are to be them -2
50. methusalinka wrote: -2:lead my eyes away from what could be told and is it- news for brain its all invain even about trees it -3
51. methusalinka wrote: has to wait I hesitate not what they are giving to commit that is it. all, while we are living. - but what a tough lesson that is.
52. methusalinka wrote: oops it took too much time my comp shut while I was typing twice. now its soon dawn. so I better say Godnat from here and me linka
53. Bennaro wrote: very nice