The painting above is titled Landscape and Memory. The title is borrowed from a book by art historian Simon Schama. In 3 words its sums up the relationship we form between our physical environment and ourselves.
One of our deepest needs is for a sense of identity and belonging. A common denominator in this is human attachment to landscape and how we find identity in landscape and place.
Landscape is not simply what we see. It is a way of seeing. We see it with our eye but interpret it with our mind and ascribe values to landscape for intangible, spiritual reasons. Landscape can be seen as a cultural construct in which our sense of place and memories reside.
My daughter will celebrate her second birthday in a few months. Since her arrival I have have thought a great deal about the genetic and non-genetic heritage that is handed down through generations. By non-genetic I mean the shared songs, rhymes, stories, jokes and memories that bind us parent to child, parent to child down through the ages.
Landscape is part of this tradition. The names we have given to places, the stories built around them.
