Artwork by Eric Eschenbach email: ebachenba@yahoo.com
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Landscapes	Eastern Washington	Industrial

Artist's Statement

Simply put, my work is about the changing landscape. Both the change brought upon the land by man and the way nature transforms the land. In the last 100 years, the Puget Sound has witnessed a rapid and drastic alteration, and nowhere has this change been so pronounced as in the urban centers. The area around the Duwamish River that flows though Seattle south of downtown was once a series of tidal flats, marches, and braided streams. But now, man has altered this landscape to become a series of factories and warehouses covering the land with concrete and steel. In this short period of time, man has literally changed the course of the river, altering it’s flow and water distribution.

However, this rapid change pales in comparison to the mostly gradual (but sometimes sudden) way nature can alter the land over the span of thousands of years. These forces can easily be witnessed in our region of rich geologic history. Nowhere are the forces for visible than in the arid, eastern parts of this region; the myriad gully system that stretch for miles before ultimately reaching the Columbia, the dramatic canyons carved through thick ancient basalt flows, and the rich tapestry of the hills all inspire me to paint. Not just for its shear beauty and humbling vastness, but also as a way of recording it for how it looks today through plein-air painting. For if history holds true, it will not look the same in the future, and this statement applies to both the man-made landscapes and the natural ones. The biggest difference is that nature is bigger than man and that nature is in a continual cycle of destruction and rebirth, whereas man at his present course is in only in a cycle or destruction. Nature will reinvent itself and endure, but where does that leave man?

Eric Eschenbach