Dualities evident in aspects of the visual world provide a framework for exploring how equivalence of landscape experience might be portrayed through the medium of paint. Research into micro/macro, past/present and here/there is driven by the text/image duality. This duality encompasses ekphrasis and gives rise to discussion on the process of making a visual but non-illustrative response to a poem. The writings of Gilles Deleuze (1925 – 1995) on Francis Bacon (1909 – 1992) are instrumental in investigating the function of paint to transmit feeling and act as a catalyst for the painting process itself. Each duality comprises two opposing or paired concepts or themes and in attempting to find accordance between each pair a tension is created that leads to a flow of ideas. This is exemplified by the micro/macro duality that invites comparison of small structures observed in rock fragments to large scale landscape formations and generates an imaginative response. Through juxtaposition of dualities new links between seemingly disparate subject matter are formed: geology and poetry, for instance, are brought together in a project that combines a particular rock type found in Cumbria with poems by Wordsworth (1770 – 1850). This provides a basis for autobiographical reflection on the here/there and past/present. Such juxtaposition acts to enrich the substance and scope of project material, forming a matrix of possibilities for further research. This process can be seen as a precursor towards a rhizomic approach, one where connections can be made between similar and dissimilar subjects with no barriers or hierarchical boundaries.

This thesis embraces the disciplines of philosophy, art history and practical theology. It is concerned with the ways in which artists have endeavoured to express the numinous or point towards the Transcendent through landscape painting. The Transcendent is described as that recognition in mankind of the capacity of knowing truth intuitively, or of attaining a scientific knowledge of an order of existence transcending the reach of the senses, and of which we can have no sensible experience. This thesis will demonstrate that landscape drawing and painting can be a means of showing the viewer glimpses of that transcendent domain. Whilst paintings of theophanies and of biblical scenes have long been created by artists to produce works that are suitable for altarpieces, it will be my contention that depictions of landscape can be also be used as aids to devotion. The period chosen for the study is 1780-1880 but for contextualisation I will at times discuss matters that lie outside these boundaries. This period covers the reawakening of the discipline of aesthetics, and the development of Idealism in Germany propounded by Immanuel Kant and Friedrich Schelling, one of the consequences of which led to recognition of landscape painting as fine art. I argue that some artists express their view of God through their images, producing hieroglyphs, divine images which can induce mystical experiences in the mind of the viewer and could be used as aids to devotion with some even being regarded as sacred. A discussion of religious experience and trigger factors is included, embracing the work of Friedrich Schleiermacher and Rudolf Otto. The works of a number of artists have been considered but special emphasis is given to Samuel Palmer and Caspar David Friedrich.

Modern historians of the British Atlantic Slave Trade and its abolition are legion. The leading scholars have long established that the campaigns to abolish the African Slave Trade and colonial plantation slavery was, for many Britons, bringing the "City of Men" closer to the "City of God". Parliamentarians responded to Wilberforce's proposition that abolishing slavery was a necessary act of atonement. This virtuous and magnificent measure, to adopt the words of Pitt, contained, at its heart, a religious and nationalist character together with a philosophy of moral and material optimism. Antislavery cut across different ranks, uniting various classes within the British population. This thesis gathers together and catalogues works pertaining to Slavery and to the representation of the Black from the period 1760 to 1841 and, to a lesser degree, prints and artefacts that were produced with Abolition and Slavery in mind. It is mainly concerned with the distribution of genres in which Slavery and Emancipation as themes were located. The thesis aims to demonstrate the relationship between Abolitionist rhetoric and the most emulated principles in art theory at the time, and to show how British artists applied their understanding of these principles to the service of visually representing the black figure. The thesis explores the ambiguous and nuanced modulations in paintings where the black subject and the black model were concerned. Readings provide evidence to show that, between 1760 and 1841, Blacks appeared in the main genres as free subjects, models, fictional characters and marginal presences. The Appendix to the thesis reveals that while the themes of "Slavery" and "Emancipation" were rarely explored as artistic themes, a new and consistent engagement with the black subject and the black model was employed for the main traditional high art genres as well as for the popular print and artefact trades. This would suggest that as Antislavery appealed to a wide spectrum of classes in Britain, paintings, (sculpture, prints and artefacts) representing Blacks were produced and directed towards diverse class interests and markets. Blacks were given the most liberating dispositions in History and Subject Painting. Stereotypical and demeaning postures are frequently observed in the genres of Portraiture and to a lesser degree in History and Subject Painting. A social method of art history is employed to support the data accumulated because this method works from the perspective that visual productions played a role in culture equal to historical events. The Thesis seeks to address a gap in British Art Historical scholarship on race and representation by including a catalogued Appendix of all the works encountered during the process of research.

This thesis is part of a practice-based Ph.D. study that investigates the genre of landscape painting through a cross-cultural perspective and method of practice. It attempts to link and step across the fields of ancient Chinese and contemporary Western art, with a focus on how to critically understand and use Chinese aesthetic traditions to make a contribution to contemporary landscape painting practice. This study argues that ancient Chinese art theory can provide unique insights and ways of thought, as a different interpretive strategy from the Western art tradition; and the traditional Chinese pictorial methodology is able to integrate into contemporary landscape painting practice and, as a result, expand existing artistic formats. This study aims to provide a cross-cultural perspective on thinking and the methods of analysis, broadening the cultural boundary of landscape painting and enriching the current understanding in the field. The theoretical section aims to provide the direction and systematic inquiry to develop a critical awareness and the appropriate methodology of studio practice. Studio practice, in the study, seeks the possibilities to create new forms of contemporary landscape painting as well as the new methods of making it, which include diverse aesthetic traditions and cultural understandings.

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The author identifies the formation of a Taiwanese identity from representations of landscape painting as introduced by Japanese colonisers and responded to by Taiwanese between 1908 and 1945. The first of two primary findings is that the history of discovering Taiwan can be traced via such visual records as maps, photographs, and landscape paintings from the seventeenth century to the mid-twentieth century. Landscape paintings represented the peak of this course of discovery. From the untamed to the civilised, the Taiwanese landscape was the site of adventure and travel activities, through which the Japanese imperial goals of modernisation for its colony were revealed. The second finding is that visual representations of landscape painting stands as evidence of an uneven relationship within which a European visual model was transported to Taiwan. Furthermore, it was found that representations of Taiwanese landscape paintings reflected a spectacle of modem life. Finally, the formation of Taiwanese local identity was discussed from the perspectives of "local colour," the culturalisation of Taiwanesen ature, and problems of identification. The concept of "local colour" as expressed in Taiwanese landscape paintings reveals a contradictory situation and predicament of local identity. With regards to the culturalisation of nature, the Taiwanese landscape was re-represented by a new aesthetic order and visual layout. Four local configuration stages (1895-1908,1908-1927,1927-1940, and 1940-1945) generalised the visual identification process. According to this analysis, colonial Taiwanese landscape painting emerged in order to fulfill the expectations of an imagined viewer, thus making identification with the environment through landscape paintings problematic. The primary conclusion of this thesis is that the discovery and representation of Taiwanese landscape during the colonial period revealed specific conditions of colonialism and modernity. For local Taiwanese, the predicament of identification was projected and acknowledged in the making of visual art.

Tha an t-ath-mheasadh a' sònrachadh cuideam sòisealta 'na Gàidhealtachd mar shealladh': ma leughar an snàithlean gu faiceallach, cuiridh e ri tuigse air an dàimh eadar na daoine mòra agus na Gàidheil tro bhreisleach na naoidheamh linn deug. Tha an gnàthnòs air a chùlaibh a' dèanamh cron air dearbh-aithne nan Gàidheal, ge-tà. Ann am peantadh, chaidh cumhachd a' ghnàth-nòis sin a bhriseadh leis 'a' Ghàidhealtachd mar dhualchas'. 'S ann tron dòigh-fhradhairc seo a bu chòir traidiseanan lèirsinneach na Gàidhealtachd a thaisbeanadh san latha an-diugh. Tron dàrna leth den naoidheamh linn deug, tharraing cruth-tìre na Gàidhealtachd ceudan de luchd-ealain. Gu tric, dhealbhaich iad an roinn mar àite sìtheil bòidheach anns an d'fhuaras co-luadair 'fa leth' stèidhichte traidiseanta. Dh'ùisnich peantairean grunn de dh'fhoirmlean ann a bhith a' dèanamh seo. Ro mheadhan na ficheadamh linn, chaidh na foirmlean seo aithneachadh leis na breithnichean-ealain mar 'an gnàth-nòs Gàidhealach'. Chaidh a chumail a-mach leotha gun robh an gnàth-nòs ath-aithriseach ro-mhaothinntinneach, agus nach do riochdaich e atharrachaidhean na naoidheamh linn deug air a' Ghàidhealtachd. Tha an tràchdas seo ag ùisneachadh teòraidhean nan saidheansan sòisealta gus athmheasadh a dhèanamh air ìomhaighean na trèimhse. Tha e a' tagradh gun robh dà shnàithlean aig na dealbhan-tìre den Ghàidhealtachd. B' e 'a' Ghàidhealtachd mar shealladh' a bh' anns an dàrna fear agus thaisbean e mì-thuigse air co-luadair na roinne. Chaidh a leasachadh tro phròiseas-cuairteachaidh agus bha àite aige ann a bhith a' daingneachadh gnàth-nòs air an do chuir uachdarain na Gàidhealtachd tùs. B' e 'a' Ghàidhealtachd mar dhualchas' a bh' anns an t-snàithlean eile. Dh'èirich i a-mach à traidisean peantaidh na h-Alba agus rannsaich i an dàimh eadar na Gàidheil, an àrainneachd nàdarrach agus tìm. B' e fìor aomadh-ealain a bh' innte: tha àite cudromach aice ann an eachdraidh-ealain na Gàidhealtachd, agus lorgar i cuideachd ann an eachdraidh-ealain Eòrpaich nas fharsainge.

A research investigation that illustrates the development of the European landscape tradition as an unbroken interactive and material movement, through discussion of artists from Annibale Carracci (1560-1609) to Richard Long (1945 –). The contribution of each artist within their respective epoch will be used to propose that the subject of landscape has become an actual creative medium, integral to and consistent with the external Plein-Air technique. Thus, presenting a ‘creative narrative’ from the observed into the articulated that will demonstrate how the examination and representation of actual landscapes have become physically used within creative presentations. The study uses key artworks that have been inspired by landscape to show the shift from documentation into interaction with the reality of the natural world. This entails the chronology of the investigation and commences with the concept of Ideal Landscape, established by Carracci, within the late 16th century, through the development of the Plein-Air tradition and culminating with particular emphasis on European landscape artists’ and movements since 1945 that have interacted with actual sites and natural materials: from the ideal to the actual. Furthermore, the European transfer and diffusion of interactive and material based landscape methods, including drawing and painting outside, the collection of organic items and photography, passed and developed from one generation to the next, informs a body of personal creative work. This is a 50/50 co-dependent strand used to illustrate the practical and creative discourses between practitioner and landscape, involving the articulation of actual land materials, found objects and Plein-Air excursions to the drawing locations of previous practitioners’, sketchbooks and journals. The insights provided, by the personal practice and associated theoretical position, aid the evaluation, analysis and description of the evolution of the creative methods inherent in the development of subject into media, but not presently described in historical accounts, therefore, presenting a Material Chronology and thus the original contribution of knowledge for this investigation.

This thesis uses a case study of the Community Home Energy Retrofit Project (CHERP) and it analyzes the larger statewide effort in California to increase energy efficiency in existing residential buildings to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. CHERP’s primary strategy is to embed itself into a community, educate residents on the multiple benefits of energy efficiency, and inspire them to take energy-saving actions in their own homes. It then builds its own community by connecting like-minded individuals together and provides an opportunity for them to exercise their political agency. This thesis analyzes CHERP’s effort in the context of the political, social, and economic climate of California. It identifies three obstacles for widespread energy efficiency adoption: one, CHERP’s lack of funding to support permanent staff and pay for collateral materials; two, low access to energy efficiency measures for low-income households and renters; and three, a lack of high quality home performance contractors that perform energy efficiency upgrades utilizing a whole-house energy systems approach. The thesis concludes with five recommendations to overcome these issues.