Heath Massey
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(530) 400-0619
I first developed the sketchbook habit as a student of landscape architecture at Rhode Island School of Design in the late 1970s. Subsequently, as a practicing landscape architect, I used drawing as an essential design tool, to visualize a design and to communicate with clients. After joining the faculty of landscape architecture at UC Davis, I taught drawing and drafting, along with design studios and courses in landscape history. It was the kind of drawing that has clear rules; a means to an end, not the end in itself. But taking a sketchbook on hikes or when traveling, I would draw more subjectively, as a complement to the precision of photographs.
Now retired and living in San Francisco, I sketch to forget the rules, aiming for something looser, less precise, more intuitive. Drawing is always my foundation, every painting begins with a sketch. And landscape is still my favorite subject, but I’m looking at landscapes differently now, attracted to the over-looked and the mundane, to scenery that lives outside the time-honored "frames" of landscape representation. And I find color, light and the application of paint to be endlessly challenging. For me, a painting is always a work in progress, a learning curve.