Time & Perspective Quote by John Dyer

He acknowledges the seasonal rhythm of an artist’s practice: when the elements block direct engagement with the landscape, he turns to secondary sources, drawings and photographs, to keep working. Yet he treats these references as sparks, not scripts. The key is transformation. Rather than producing a literal record tethered to a specific hour and coordinate, he aims for something that outlives the circumstances of its origin.

A “time and place study” suggests documentation: a snapshot in paint that verifies where the painter stood, when the light fell, and how the shapes arranged themselves. He intentionally resists that documentary pull. By altering, editing, and reimagining, he preserves the vitality usually found in plein air work while embracing the broader freedoms of the studio. The photograph becomes a scaffold; the drawing, a memory-trace. From there, decisions about color, rhythm, and composition serve feeling over fact.

This approach honors the lived experience of a scene rather than its topographic accuracy. Winter becomes a season of synthesis: collaging moments, layering impressions from different days, bending perspective, and exaggerating contrasts to communicate the essence of the place. The result can be more truthful than a copy, because it reaches for the emotional and atmospheric core, wind, salt, cold brightness, human presence, elements that a camera records imperfectly and a single on-site sitting cannot fully express.

There is also a quiet statement about artistic autonomy. Reference material can seduce with its completeness, but he insists on the painter’s prerogative to change, omit, and invent. By refusing to be bound by what the lens captured, he protects his voice from becoming a mere index of appearances. The work aspires to continuity across seasons: whether outdoors or indoors, it remains animated by interpretation, memory, and the pursuit of a painting that stands on its own, independent of the specific day that prompted it.