Redefining the Sublime in Landscape Painting: An Artistic Investigation of Rock Formations Within Urban Environments

The following work is a creative exploration of rock formations within urban settings, illuminating the sublimity of seemingly mundane micro-environments. I argue that the historical use of the sublime in landscape painting has allowed artists to create artworks capable of evoking powerful emotion. To support this claim, I investigate the works of American Traditional Landscape painters and Abstract Expressionists, focusing on the impact of their art within the context of its creation. Moreover, I illustrate the importance of redefining the sublime to contemporary society as growing urban environments decrease accessibility to uninhabited natural settings. Through the creation of three oil paintings and two charcoal drawings, I depict seemingly unimportant rock formations in an abstracted sense to demonstrate their sublime nature. I assert that a rock’s sublimity is derived from their existence on this planet as many of these formations are billions of years old, a number unquantifiable to the human mind. Therefore, as rocks frequent urban environments, I argue that the sublime can be interpreted on a micro-scale accessible within contemporary society.