Drifter is about a character that doesn’t settle, he wanders, and that wandering is within painted spaces of pure imagination. The idea of pristine, untouched natural spaces remains a pertinent part of Sutherland’s imagination in this fifth solo exhibition with Salon91. In his paintings, that idea of pure landscape is able to exist, allowing an experience of self, removed from social or cultural trappings and attachments. The artist’s own feelings of awe within natural environments are pertinently expressed through his signature single figure dwarfed in the landscape.
Sutherland’s character moves without anchor through various spaces. These are geographically diverse and include forest, beach, lake and mountain. Sometimes he comes across the residue of habitation: a shelter or a dwelling, but for the most part the series imagines the uninhabited in a state of dreamy and perfect calm. Within popular imagination the drifter is a person without permanent place. Like the troubadour or travelling poet of medieval times, the contemporary drifter is a traveller without a determined destination. The quest for experiences, new sights and adventure fuels an existence without attachment or permanent temporal impact. It is an idealized state appropriated by many social philosophers and storytellers like Herman Hesse to comment on the accepted conventions of contemporary society. The viewer, like the drifter, is invited to move smoothly through temporal experiences of place that enable them to approach the spiritual.
Words by Natasha Norman
