Paul Paiement
It’s an exciting time to be alive. We live 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 natural
world. Like Henry David Thoreau in Walden, we seek a slower,
more deliberate life. Though seemingly separate from nature,
we are, in fact, nature. My paintings hybridize the inorganic
or “manmade” synthetic elements of culture (in the form of
architecture) with the organic elements of the natural world.
I attempt to reconcile these binaries through the visual languages
of linear/atmospheric perspective, representation/abstraction,
and the technique of layering. The landscapes I choose to paint
lack any specific identity or location. I use atmospheric
perspective to create a naturalistic scene that is vast and infinite.
The airbrushed plexiglass 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
comingling of nature and machine.
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