Greg Wood, Dream State

A dream state signifies an unconscious experience that is suspended in the transitory state of sleep. It also suggests the impossibility of return: for who hasn’t awoken from a dream in which they have longed to return? Greg Wood’s latest body of work, Dream State, taps into this sense of longing. The ‘dream’ of the title suggests these paintings are drawn from an unconscious remembering or imagining of a place. In fact, when Wood once painted from photographs or en plein air, he now chooses to paint from memory. And with this shift, memory or recollection becomes key material as Wood foregoes literal depictions of landscapes, and instead paints from his mind’s eye

Wood’s scenery is deliberately ambiguous. Without recognisable landmarks or identifiable features, these landscapes are at once everywhere and nowhere. They recall the transitional moment between sleep and wakefulness, where things are once familiar and disorientating. This ambiguity invites the viewer to stay longer, to linger as they search for an anchor of familiarity within the landscape. When contemplating one of these landscapes, the viewer is pulled towards their own associations or recollections. The effect is akin to entering one’s own memory, where forgotten experiences lie dormant. The longer one stays with each painting, turning the landscapes over your mind, the deeper its holding power.

Across his work more broadly, Wood captures the transitory effect of the natural world. In his paintings, fleeting light creates brief illuminations, mist momentarily cloaks mountains, horizons darken with clouds, and snow settles atop mountains. Wood frequently attunes his eye, and brush, to the sky, and the changeable qualities of air and light that make up its very fabric. Painting a dream is akin to painting an atmosphere, trying to catch hold of something that is already half gone. Wood’s observant depictions of variable conditions remind us that change is our only certainty