10 July 2025
Nice piece on Joachim Patinir's The Penitence of St Jerome (1515) by Dylan Vandenhoeck, been holding what he says about how that work “embodies a situated, shifting engagement with the world” in its approach. Has made me sit longer with the idea of the confluence of observable space and inner space (with regard to the optical). I think where I can meet him is my relationship with memory, which seems like it is becoming more important to me than the observed present. Recall filtered into illusionistic space feels related to how he describes the painting as “a landscape of interiority made exterior. The rocks, the trees, the streams, and paths become the spatial correlate of Jerome’s self—his perception, his struggle, his consciousness.” I like the idea that the logic of a painting could be both independent from and intrinsically linked to the maker, and what might arise from an awareness of those two forces in dialogue.