Walking in Beauty

My paintings are an active response to a sense of wonder at being in the world. They do not address any specific art discourse or theory. Using a simple landscape format provides a surface on which I try to express and/or reflect on my mind-state while contemplating experiences I have had - mostly outdoors. Since the late 1970s my works have gone through a range of stylistic treatments with a current focus on space, distance, atmosphere, light, energy and textures - presented on a two dimensional surface using paint. I compose and paint images that resonate between principle subjects and surrounding spaces.

Sometimes the sensation of momentarily loosing "myself" occurs in open places. Standing with great spaces before me may trigger a perception where boundaries are only shimmering illusions and a holistic presence is pervasive.

My landscape paintings are composed from memories of an experience. I use memory as a filtering agent to distil an image for a painting, discarding useless details. I do occasional on-site drawings or photographs which pile up in my studio; but I do not generally refer to them much while making a painting.. When a painting is complete it must reflect an emotional sensation that calls to mind some aspect of my remembered perceptions.

The Navajo Prayer expresses my gratefulness at being alive in this world and crystallizes my own emotional motivation as an artist.

In beauty I walk.
With beauty before me, I walk.
With beauty behind me, I walk.
With beauty below me, I walk.
With beauty all around me, I walk.

It is finished in beauty.
It is finished in beauty.
It is finished in beauty.

Robert Marchessault
January 2008

 

Robert Marchessault explores contemporary sublime landscape in paintings that repeatedly foreground a single tree, stripped of non-essential visual elements and emptied of any human presence. Poetic and meditative, these trees are the quiet centre of being and a visual invocation of human self-awareness.

Ilse Gassinger, 2009, Director, The Durham Art Gallery, Ontario, CA