AMERICAN LANDSCAPES 2000
These paintings represent a view of America rarely visited by the myth makers. It’s the place that doesn’t get pictured in National Geographic or written about in Time magazine and doesn’t get sung about in anthems. It is the bizarre, mundane, ironic, incongruous U.S. that exists just beyond our consciousness. It almost always includes some combination of automobile culture, fast food and the ubiquitous TV and cell phone towers, and an occasional nuclear plant just up the beach.
TV Nation is a memory of a shack seen traveling through Tennessee. Suburban Utopia is imagined (though no less real) and Branded is a composite of real images. The rest are real, actual places painted from photos Mary Ellen took in travels around the Midwest.
All work © 2000, except Branded, ©2001
