Rastall, Jan, artist2017-11-282017-11-282017https://hdl.handle.net/10217/185099Colorado State University Art and Art History Department capstone project.Capstone contains the artist's statement, a list of works, and images of works.The artist's statement: Climbing high mountains and walking thousands of miles on trails through-out my life has graced me with a deep appreciation for the natural world. I paint experiences I have had in the outdoors when time appeared to stand still. I use the landscape genre because of the affinity I feel with the natural world. The landscape offers unlimited aesthetic expression. Painting mountain vistas allows me to turn personal experiences into a visual narrative. My current body of work is focused on summit vistas from mountains over 14,000 feet in Colorado that I have climbed. I utilize composition, shape, line and color to give form to feelings of power, strength, awe, sanctity, insignificance, impermanence, and also vulnerability. Feelings that I have experienced when standing on a summit. In the studio, I reference photographs my climbing partner or I have taken. I deconstruct the photograph into an amalgam of abstract qualities found in the landscape. Focusing on the abstract in realism opens a door to the emotive qualities of the experience rather than on direct rendering of the landscape. My paintings of summit vistas are stories told through the eye. I use a simple palette of primary and secondary colors to explore the nuances of light found at high elevation. Mixing fresh color is inherent in my creative process. I practice en plein air to understand how light defines shapes and color in the natural world. I then translate that knowledge into my studio practice. I exploit the physicality of paint through intentional mark-making. I give paint a voice through colors and marks that dance across the canvas. I think of each stroke of color as a musical note in a key that composes the narrative. I chose my scale to achieve a compositional balance between cohesion and fragmentation. Viewed up close, the paintings are a construct of fissures and forms. From a distance, colors and shapes consolidate into ridges, slopes, valleys, and other natural features. I paint summit vistas to capture the imagination of anyone who has never climbed a mountain and to celebrate with those who have.born digitalStudent worksengCopyright and other restrictions may apply. User is responsible for compliance with all applicable laws. For information about copyright law, please see https://libguides.colostate.edu/copyright.oil paintingsColorado 14erspaintingmountain summitsImage