After moving from New Mexico to the Bay Area in 1996 I began collecting landscape photographs mainly of the Southwestern US. At the same time, the San Francisco Muni electrical lines forced a lengthy bout of nostalgia for seeing skies without interruptions. My paintings and films are inspired by the belief in therapeutic effects of viewing distant forms in the landscape. I started using film as a multiplier and quick viewer of minutely varied landscape compositions. Manipulating these images to show our disassociation as well as engagement with landscape also confuses perception in which thunderheads are mountains, tree lines resemble moss, a plateau ridge is the outer edge of bark, and lava flow is an ocean. I am fascinated with the dirt caught in the crevices of crosswalk paint that creates aerial landscapes and with the event of unfamiliar streets, hills, buildings that suddenly seem familiar with just the right light and weather conditions.

Kim Miskowicz