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The Landscape Illuminated is a curated space of creative works by me, Robert Lewis. You will find a collection of oil paintings, digital collages, photography, video studies, poetry, stories, and memoirs. Each work is a piece of my creative journey. Each offers a glimpse into my own human experience.
I invite you to explore, consider, and relate.
Oil Paintings
Painting in oils on canvas is probably what I am known for. Here is a sampling of my oil paintings…
Photography
The camera is a quick way to zero in on something in the world that catches my eye. Not that the camera can always capture that thing. The saying is true, “Beauty is in the eye of the beholder.” Sometimes it’s nature, sometimes it’s asphalt. Here is a sample of some of my photography…
Plein Air Journals
As a practicing plein air painter, I have kept journals of my experiences…
Digital Collage
Using a collection of found images, taken images, and generated images, I have created a portfolio of poetical digital collages…
Poetics
Everyone has a poetic bent. Mine is particular and peculiar, deeply dark but full of light. Read some here…
Video Studies
Like my photography and, indeed, my plein air work, these snippets of the world are just observations, studies, or contemplations. You won’t be entertained. Almost nothing happens. But stay with them to see what you see. Coming Soon.
Stories
Perhaps I will finish some of these stories I’ve been working on for years. Here’s one, at least…
Memoir
This may end up being the heart of this collection. My memories. There is a very long list of memories that feel unusual to me. Maybe because I’ve, by chance, been to so many places, and lived in so many different cities. It’s all fresh in my mind. A person is what they do and how they do it. Memoirs…
Concept
Over the years, when the mood struck, I worked, or was it played, on several conceptual pieces which I will attempt to find documentation for. Here are a few examples:
The Stone Game
Camping along the American River, I foraged several stones of various sizes and shapes. One large, flat, rectangular stone was used as a board for a game. The pieces in the game consisted of small stones. A star shape, a cube, a round, a crescent, a tubular stone, and a bowl-shaped stone, were the pieces to the Stone Game. A pair of stone dice were fashioned. Areas on the board were designated to have different meanings and actions. As your piece landed on a space, you followed the directions. Some actions required you to recall a memory, some to recite or compose a poem, another would confess a truth.
The Sentinel Bones of Giants
On the Mendocino coast, the beach was littered with hundreds of bleached logs. It was a tangle of what looked like the bones of giants. On a full moon night, my helper and I wedged smaller logs upright into the tangle of larger logs. We did this in a line for a few hundred feet.
Zen Bamboo Flute
Stream of Conscience
Kintsugi Sea Glass Coke Bottle
