Most of the wildernesses I have experienced are not endless expanses, but small patches within our larger civilized lands. I can only imagine what it must have felt like to the native peoples, explorers, and pioneers. The mysterious, frightening, even mystical wilderness. One can come close to it in the vastness of Alaska perhaps, if you are lucky enough to be able to get into the bush.
What makes wilderness wild is the edge of fear and wonder. The unease of not being in control.I just finished reading Barry Lopez's Arctic Dreams. He writes that the arctic peoples have a word for that edge. It is "quamaneq": The shaman light to see in the dark, joy and violence together, the edge of the primitive. How wondrous it is to experience wilderness in all its glory, its fierce and dangerous beauty. There is no sentimentality there, and to survive in the wild one must proceed carefully.
I have tried to put the sort of quamaneq I am talking about into my recent paintings. The people in them are merely visitors. They seek something rare that can only be found in a wild landscape. Something that is missing from their lives.
