For me, the thing that really defines the new world is a mythic journey; as well as the movement west and into the landscape. So I decided to take one of those epic journeys myself.

Rather than venture off in some arbitrary direction, I chose to journey east. That path was and is a defining route for people aspiring to positions of power, but for me the interesting thing was that it opposed the notion of 'moving westward'. Here I began, with an open mind in search of a wilderness landscape, even though the east might have seemed over-trampled with crowded cities and urban congestion. I prepared by packing Thoreau's "Backwoods and Along the Seashore", and to make the passage more intriguing, I decided to travel via bicycle for what would be over 2000 miles. Appreciating that at times, this method of transport would take me no faster than the speed of horse and buggy, I was ready to give myself over to this reality. Embarking on this venture positioned me within the landscape more intimately, allowing my initial anticipation of static views to instead unravel 'cinematic experiences'.

Travel is like reading a book, and movement on a bicycle is like watching a movie. The dilemma this poses reveals a paradoxical relationship between the landscape and the methods used to record it. Lines and fades in paintings suggest skips and distortions in film. Sometimes an image appears cloudy and clear simultaneously. Subjects are inspired from specific and imagined locations.

While riding, I came to experience 'time' as somewhat of a measured visual perception; the picture frames inspired from slides, the typography and numbers as harbingers of maps, GPS coordinates, cell-phones, and compasses. A tree on the horizon 15 miles away might have been seen as an hour, the bend in the road ahead could have been 10 minutes. When terrain changed, adjustments in sighting changed accordingly. As I camped in an area where the view appeared as it would have to travelers 100 years ago, time and space constantly reminded me that being a casual observer was illusory.

My work process moves towards dichotomies that form their own natural conclusions, such as: how the notion of 'wilderness' contains within it the notion of 'containment'; how a reverential depiction of nature depends on technique; and how all of this reveals that I have created nature in my own image. I try to imbue the picture plane with what makes nature potent, mysterious, and ultimately untamable, while at the same time manifesting and awareness that this view of nature is a product of my own mythology.

Don Pollack 2011