“Someday, somewhere – anywhere, unfailingly, you’ll find yourself, and that, and only that, can be the happiest or bitterest hour of your life.” Pablo Neruda

Landscape has strong currents of serenity, nostalgia, joy, melancholy.  Light, content, and composition all contribute to the mood of a painting. Palmer’s landscapes set out to evoke a range of emotional responses. There is the sadness that comes from witnessing loss.   There is nostalgia triggered by memory.  From a childhood spent in the outdoors, roaming around unrestrained.  These are the two most obvious moods that dominate Matt Palmer’s landscape paintings. At times they may appear to be at odds with each other.   One is brooding and has a more somber tone – the other is brighter and uplifting. Drawing more on memory than fact, in the same way, our personal lives are inflected with the duality in tone – Palmer’s view seems tinted by the emotional ebbs and flows that affect our fluctuations in outlook.  It is this duality that Palmer’s landscape paintings in Someplace, somewhere, sometime set out to capture.  A moment in time that captures something more than just a view.