Herm Freeman

“I’m always chasing Soutine and Cezanne. Some time ago, I went to the south of France to visit those incredible landscape motifs. If I could live anywhere I’d like to live in those paintings.

“So, I find myself trying to get to work in the studio and the questions begin: ‘What do I want to do and how should I do it? Is my landscape an actual place, or a meditation about Place? Is it about the place, or is it about the paint? Well, it’s usually about the place via the paint. I love the way unexpected shapes in the landscape seem to open me up. Anything can happen in nature. Landscapes evoke such a variety of emotions…But what do you call a frenetic urban/suburban pastoral Franco/American landscape?

“How far ‘out there’ do I want my paintings to go? Does anybody care to join me out there?’ I know this: that our landscape (whether real or imagined) is our actual connection to the world. What I express about the landscape (in the color and the frenzy and the surface of these paintings) is not just about how the world might look, but the place where I want to be connected…In my landscape painting, I have found a subject pliable enough to withstand the joy, the frenzy and the variation of my changeable connection.

“When I paint…while I’m painting…I am OK…The desire to paint summons up the energy to paint. The way I feel when I have the energy to paint is one of the rewards of painting. How does the painting make you feel?

“I try to look with a critical eye, but I don’t want to be too critical…I want to see well, but I don’t want to see too much. Do you know what I mean?”