Nexus
It’s an exciting time to be alive. We are living in a period that is reminiscent of the Romantic era. Our fast-paced, controlled, ordered, synthetic, technologically driven culture has created a deep desire to reconnect with the vast and ever changing. Like Henry David Thoreau in “Walden,” we seek a slower, more deliberate life. Despite seeming separate from nature we are indeed ‘nature.’ My paintings “hybridize” the inorganic or ‘man made’ synthetic elements of culture (ie. architecture via linear perspective) with the organic elements of the natural world.
My paintings attempt to reconcile these differences through the visual languages of linear/atmospheric perspective, representation/abstraction, and the use of layering. I choose to paint landscapes that lack any specific identity or location. I use atmospheric perspective to create a naturalistic scene that is vast and infinite. The airbrushed plexi-glass overlays are flattened architectural drawings. Though flat, they are drawn in perspective and create a geometric abstraction that contrasts with the detailed representation in the landscape. A hybrid is the result of a co-mingling between nature and machine.
Paul Paiement
November 2017