Landscape XXXIII 1998

Evan Summer’s ‘Landscape XXXIII’ is a black and white print full of parallel lines, dots, and shapes that look like minimalist architecture. I see the artist layering, scraping, and hatching the surface, trying to build depth and form on a flat plane. I’m thinking about what Summer was looking at when he made this. Is he looking at landscapes through construction sites? Is he imagining things that look solid but are dissolving? Maybe he’s thinking about how our bodies occupy space. Look how the lines of the landscape meet the lines of the architecture, blurring boundaries and creating a sense of tension. I can feel the push and pull of different ideas bumping into each other, which is what all the best landscape painters are doing, from Constable to Yvonne Jacquette. Each mark holds a thought, a feeling, a question. Artists like Summer show us that making is always about learning, unlearning, and finding new ways of seeing.