Calyso's Cave
oil on panel
12"x12"

As I look at landscape I retain the forms, colors, and textures in my memory as separate elements. On the canvas they combine in an altogether different way from how they appear in nature. A combination of these elements is consciously brought together and reconstituted to form a composition - a new place, a landscape-dream environment that has its own logic and integrity. I set up a tension between figuration and abstraction, between the familiar and the otherworldly, and between memory and imagination. My intention is to draw the viewer into an imagined and enchanted world, sometimes unsettling, sometimes mysterious.

I paint in oils because I like the fluidity and luminosity. You can so easily paint over, take out, rediscover, allowing an enormous flexibility. I start by observing nature or landscape and continue in the studio where a painting builds up, self-generates, has a life of its own. I am challenged by how to use color in combination with drawing to create an illusion of space or a mood.
Then there is the problem of how to capture the elusiveness of experience and memory. Sometimes the solution can occur spontaneously when I’m not looking or thinking. My hope is to reveal on canvas the mysterious, even the threatening as well as the sublime.

Visit Sandys Moore's website at www.sandysmoore.com