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My
work is about the changing landscape—both the change brought
upon the land by man and the way nature transforms the land. Nature
has a duality of being simultaniously finite and infinite. In the
last 100 years, the Puget Sound has witnessed a rapid and drastic
alteration, and nowhere has this change been so pronounced as in the
urban centers. The area around the Duwamish River that flows through
Seattle south of downtown epitomizes this change. It was once a series
of tidal flats and marshes. But now, man has altered this landscape
to become a series of factories and warehouses covering the land with
concrete and steel. In this short period of time, man has literally
changed the course of the river, altering its flow and water distribution.
On the recent painting trip for my current show, I kept finding myself
in places where Lewis and Clark had been just over 200 years prior.
I tried to imagine how the land looked to those early explorers and
how much has changed in that short span of time.
However, this rapid change pales in comparison to the mostly gradual (but sometimes sudden) way nature can alter the land over the span of thousands of years. These forces can easily be witnessed in the Northwest's rich geologic history. Nowhere are the forces more visible than in arid Eastern Washington—the myriad gully systems that stretch for miles before ultimately reaching the Columbia River, the dramatic canyons carved through thick ancient basalt flows, and the rich tapestry of the hills all inspire me to paint. Not just for its sheer beauty and humbling vastness, but also as a way of recording how it looks today through plein-air painting. For if history holds true, the landscape will not look the same in the future—both the man-made landscapes and the natural ones. The biggest difference is that nature is bigger than man and nature is in a continual cycle of destruction and rebirth, whereas man at his present course is only in a cycle of destruction. Nature will reinvent itself and endure, but where does that leave man?
Eric Eschenbach
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