David B. Smith Gallery

Artist Statement:

My work explores the way we experience nature and how this is tied to the cultural practice of constructing landscapes as idealized images.

When we are in nature we experience the world through all of our senses in a dynamic way, but at the same time we are framing what we see through the cultural expectations we have absorbed through representational systems such as landscape painting, wildlife documentary, and travel guides. It is impossible, then, to have a true, non-mediated experience of nature even though we may long for it. My work explores the contradictions between the projection of idealized, picturesque views of landscape and our desire to have an authentic experience in nature.

My recent compositions contain a mixture of landscape images painted on paper, which have been shaped into three-dimensional sculptures that protrude from the wall. The battered and wrinkled sheets of paper that are the foundation of these works carry a blend of imagery containing picturesque landscapes drawn from memory, photo transfers based on nature photography, abstract areas of raw paint, and actual artifacts from the land such as pine needles and bark. By employing multiple representational modes, I create tension between the cultural codes traditionally used to represent landscape. For example, pools of thick, raw, liquid paint at once expose the illusion of representational systems and mimic the properties of the rivers and streams they are used to signify. Similarly, the exaggerated folds of the thick watercolor paper transform the flat, framed image of the traditional landscape into a dimensional topography that cannot be completely owned from one vantage point. The three-dimensional forms of these new terrains -- painted on both sides and containing hidden vignettes -- encourage the kind of exploration one might find in nature rather than a traditional picture.

Artist Biography:

Gregory Euclide is an artist and teacher living in the Twin Cities of Minnesota. His attraction to the landscape originates from his experience of growing up in the rural landscapes of Wisconsin. Free to roam from farm field to forest edge, he developed an appreciation for authentic experience within the natural landscape. The complexity and interconnectedness of the environment had a profound impact on him as a child and would become the content and conceptual framework for his future work.

After teaching high school art for three years in southern Minnesota, he took a teaching job in the Twin Cities. He has been awarded two Minnesota State Arts Board Artist Initiative Grants and a Jerome Foundation Residency through the Blacklock Nature Sanctuary. Currently he is teaching high school art in South Minneapolis and making work in his studio.