Painting the View From My Doorstep

This essay follows the journey of my process driven investigation surrounding nuances between seeing, perceiving, and representing the view from my doorstep through paint. The work I created and is discussed in this thesis is in chronological order and follows the progression of my studio exploration, as well as questioning past and current painting tools and techniques. I want to address the following questions: 1) What can painting do now that it could not before and how can contemporary painting practices challenge our notions of what a landscape can be? 2) Can I create a painting from my doorstep that steps outside of my own learned perception? This exploration has allowed me to learn more about the relationship between abstraction and representation, as well as the material potential of paint.