Magellan’s Circumnavigation, 2010, acrylic on paper, 48″ x 32″©

Cook’s Third Voyage, 2009, acrylic on paper, 36″ x 48″©

Lewis and Clark, 2009, acrylic on paper, 36″ x 48″©

During the summer, with the support of a Cullen Grant from Abilene Christian University, I began a series of paintings based on historic journeys. An exhibition of Chinese landscape paintings at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in NYC set me to thinking about the tradition of representing or encapsulating a journey in a vast landscape. Several paintings of this intent appeared in that exhibition and they creatively implied the passage of time as well as narrative content. I thought that my use of the language of maps could function in a similar way, but could increase the evocation of time and more fully imply the story of the journey, all within an abstract format.

The paintings I completed dealt, in sequence, with Lewis and Clark’s exploration of the land west of the Mississippi, Captain James Cook’s final voyage, the one to discover the Northwest Passage, and Magellan’s voyage around the world. A wide variety of maps of the traversed areas were woven together to represent the journey. By using maps of different types and from different eras, and by duplicating references, I was able to broaden the scope of time and imply the varied climates and conditions that were encountered along the routes.