Above: Surprise, Surprise No. 22 creates the sensation of standing within a vast mountainous landscape, looking across a valley toward distant peaks and snow-covered ridges. The image feels unexpectedly photographic, as though a specific place has been captured: a viewpoint from within the tree line, a mountain slope, or a landscape witnessed at a particular moment.
Yet the longer the image is examined, the more it dissolves back into material and process. The drawing becomes partially hidden within the environment, appearing less like an illustration and more like evidence embedded within the landscape. Dark brown passages carry flashes of intense underlying color, creating the sensation of electricity moving through the surface—like lightning passing through a storm-filled sky or energy moving beneath volcanic terrain.
The image holds a tension between recognition and uncertainty. It feels like a real place until closer looking reveals that the landscape exists somewhere between memory, imagination, and abstraction.
Below: The reverse surface reveals another moment within the same environment. What appears from Above as fire, energy, or a landscape in transformation becomes something closer to aftermath: cooled earth, glowing remnants, and soft white passages suggesting smoke drifting upward after an event has passed.
The two sides feel like different views of the same location across time. One captures the moment of intensity; the other holds the quiet that follows. The hidden layers of color create a sense of an environment that continues beyond what is immediately visible.
Reflection: Surprise, Surprise No. 22 explores the human desire to recognize places within abstract forms. The work demonstrates how perception can assemble a landscape from fragments: a dark shape becomes a mountain, a color transition becomes atmosphere, and a line becomes a distant horizon.
The process of folding, transferring, and reopening the tracing paper creates an image that carries multiple moments at once. Colors and marks accumulate like geological layers, preserving evidence of transformation while allowing new interpretations to emerge.
Like a remembered landscape, a dream, or a photograph from a place we have never visited, Surprise, Surprise No. 22 occupies the space between observation and invention. It invites the viewer to believe in the landscape for a moment—and then to discover the mystery of how that belief was created.
Above: Surprise, Surprise No. 22 creates the sensation of standing within a vast mountainous landscape, looking across a valley toward distant peaks and snow-covered ridges. The image feels unexpectedly photographic, as though a specific place has been captured: a viewpoint from within the tree line, a mountain slope, or a landscape witnessed at a particular moment.
Yet the longer the image is examined, the more it dissolves back into material and process. The drawing becomes partially hidden within the environment, appearing less like an illustration and more like evidence embedded within the landscape. Dark brown passages carry flashes of intense underlying color, creating the sensation of electricity moving through the surface—like lightning passing through a storm-filled sky or energy moving beneath volcanic terrain.
The image holds a tension between recognition and uncertainty. It feels like a real place until closer looking reveals that the landscape exists somewhere between memory, imagination, and abstraction.
Below: The reverse surface reveals another moment within the same environment. What appears from Above as fire, energy, or a landscape in transformation becomes something closer to aftermath: cooled earth, glowing remnants, and soft white passages suggesting smoke drifting upward after an event has passed.
The two sides feel like different views of the same location across time. One captures the moment of intensity; the other holds the quiet that follows. The hidden layers of color create a sense of an environment that continues beyond what is immediately visible.
Reflection: Surprise, Surprise No. 22 explores the human desire to recognize places within abstract forms. The work demonstrates how perception can assemble a landscape from fragments: a dark shape becomes a mountain, a color transition becomes atmosphere, and a line becomes a distant horizon.
The process of folding, transferring, and reopening the tracing paper creates an image that carries multiple moments at once. Colors and marks accumulate like geological layers, preserving evidence of transformation while allowing new interpretations to emerge.
Like a remembered landscape, a dream, or a photograph from a place we have never visited, Surprise, Surprise No. 22 occupies the space between observation and invention. It invites the viewer to believe in the landscape for a moment—and then to discover the mystery of how that belief was created.