The Garden of Two
I am fascinated by Landscape not as Place but as a construct. Complex and often contradictory, the Landscape is not natural, impartial, or objective but a construct imposed upon geology and ecologies. Stories, legends, and myths are created from Place for many reasons, but all are subjective, frequently anthropomorphise, and have an agenda. Place becomes an idealized and utopic fiction, the stage for legend and myth. A singular Place transmutes into a multitude as people populate it with their own agendas and meanings; a mountain isn’t an impartial geological and ecological formation – a Place, but becomes the subjective, ranging from specific constructs to diverse and diffuse imaginings of broader cultural scope. We create the Landscape in which we live.
Here I call on the pencil pines of the high places which for me are so redolent of Tasmania, yet the alpine environment in which they are anchored is absent; only the tree and sky form this garden.
Jason Cordero
2023
Oil on linen