Robert Raczka

landscape & garden paintings, gouache on paper

After a lengthy practice as a photographer of landscapes--natural, human-made, and human-altered--in 2017 I added another dimension to my art making by painting from low resolution cellphone photographs that I had shot for that purpose. These photographs are shot while going about my extensive outdoor activities.

The paintings reflect my reverence for nature and my fascination with the nature-culture hybrids of landscape and garden design. All are paintings of human-altered landscapes, which admittedly describes virtually everything at this point. Many of the paintings are of the garden that I tend, and it appears to me that my closeness to and affection for that garden--and for other landscapes--comes through.

Even as I put my subjective spin on my depiction of a scene, I am expressing an attachment to what exists. I find nature and landscape to be infinitely varied, richly textured and detailed, and endlessly satisfying. In making a painting, I can distill or heighten nature but my imagination never exceeds the beauty of nature in its specifics as well as its cycles. I am inclined to agree with Donald Richie that nature worship in the one true religion.

 

2017

Close to home