Why I Think of Emotion as a Landscape
When I work, I rarely think of emotion as something abstract or internal only. I think of it as a place. Emotional states feel spatial to me. They have density, distance, temperature, and depth. Some feel foggy and expansive, others compressed and heavy. This is why my work often resembles landscapes, even when there is no horizon or ground. I’m not illustrating scenery. I’m mapping feeling as terrain.
Colour Gradients as Emotional Movement
Gradients are central to how I translate emotion visually. Feelings rarely shift abruptly. They move gradually, bleed into one another, hesitate. A colour gradient allows that kind of movement to exist without explanation. In my work, transitions between hues matter more than the hues themselves. A slow change from green into blue, or pink into red, reflects emotional drift rather than emotional statement. It shows how states evolve rather than where they end.
Atmospheric Haze and Emotional Distance
The hazy, mist-like layers that appear in many of my pieces function as emotional distance. They are not meant to obscure, but to soften. Emotion is rarely sharp when it is being processed. It becomes diffuse, harder to locate. Atmospheric haze allows the image to hold uncertainty without tension. It creates space for the viewer to approach at their own pace, mirroring how we move toward difficult or tender feelings in real life.
Texture as Memory and Pressure
Texture in my drawings is never purely decorative. It carries pressure. Repeated marks, grain, and layered surfaces act like emotional residue. They suggest accumulation rather than surface polish. I think of texture as memory embedded in the image. Just as experiences leave traces in the body, textures leave traces in the visual field. They slow the eye, asking it to register time rather than consume form quickly.
Soft Chaos as Emotional Honesty
Many of my compositions include what I think of as soft chaos. Elements overlap, patterns repeat imperfectly, forms resist clean hierarchy. This is intentional. Emotional life is rarely orderly, but it is rarely completely chaotic either. Soft chaos allows contradiction to exist without collapse. It’s a way of being honest about emotional complexity without turning it into visual noise.
Surreal Form as Inner Geography
The surreal forms in my work emerge naturally from this emotional logic. Bodies merge with plants. Faces dissolve into pattern. Flowers become eyes or organs. These forms are not meant to shock. They describe inner geography. When emotion becomes intense or prolonged, it reshapes perception. Surreal form allows the drawing to reflect that reshaping without narrative or symbolism that feels imposed.
Landscapes Without Horizons
Traditional landscapes rely on perspective and distance. Emotional landscapes do not. Many of my pieces lack a clear foreground or background. Everything exists on the same plane, pressing forward at once. This reflects how emotion is experienced internally, without linear perspective. There is no “over there.” There is only presence, density, and relation.
Why These Landscapes Feel Familiar
Even when the imagery is strange, emotional landscapes tend to feel recognisable. This familiarity doesn’t come from visual reference. It comes from embodied experience. We recognise the weight of certain colours, the pull of depth, the relief of open space. The work resonates because it aligns with how emotion actually behaves, not how it is usually described.
The Viewer Inside the Terrain
I don’t position the viewer as an observer looking at these landscapes from a distance. The viewer is inside them. There is no safe overlook. This is why the scale often feels intimate and enveloping. The work doesn’t ask to be analysed. It asks to be inhabited, even briefly.
Why Mapping Emotion Matters
For me, turning feeling into colour, texture, and form is a way of giving it structure without reducing it. Emotional landscapes allow feeling to exist without needing resolution. They don’t demand clarity. They offer orientation. You may not know exactly what you’re feeling, but you can sense where you are.
Emotional Terrain as a Living System
These landscapes are not static. They behave like living systems. Colours shift, textures accumulate, forms echo and mutate. This reflects how emotional states evolve over time. Nothing is fixed. Nothing is final. The image holds movement even when it appears still.
When Art Becomes a Place to Stand
Ultimately, emotional landscapes are about creating a place to stand inside experience. Not to escape emotion, but to recognise it. Through gradients, haze, texture, and surreal form, I try to give feeling a shape that can be looked at, returned to, and lived with. The work doesn’t resolve emotion. It gives it ground.
