Starálfur

If we think about the death of painting, then there is nothing more embarrassing and old fashioned than landscape painting. A mediated vision of the ideal landscape that we all have in our mind's eye based on reproductions of Constable and Monet. No longer radical, any power they once had has been bled away by mechanical reproduction.

I wanted to combine this idea with the use of the caravan as a metaphor for melancholia. The caravan transforms a region of wilderness into landscape whether it is urban or pastoral. It provides a mark of civilisation and passes a comment on our relationship with the environment.

I begin painting by spreading a wash on the canvas in a random manner and as I paint the picture begins to assert itself; this first stage is free and unconscious, but once the landscape is established the addition of the caravan is carefully calculated.

In this painting the landscape could be read as either a glimpse of heaven or a post apocalyptic world where we, the “Starálfur” are in a frozen wasteland, and are witnessing the beauty of destruction on a vast scale.