GB | When we look at your vivid depictions of magnificent landscapes around the world we are obviously aware that we are seeing a personal vision transforming three-dimensional phenomena into two dimen- sions. We are also aware of the immense commitment of time taken in travel and in painting. But your new exhibition specifically deals with time. You’re moving into the fourth dimension and you can’t walk to the fourth dimension and start painting it. So in what ways are you going to deal with something not really measurable? TF | Partly by showing examples of things that make you think about time. A simple example would be the 4000-year-old bristlecone pine, or a two and a half thousand-year-old giant sequoia. Most people have never seen those things, and when they see the painting, and they realize that fantastic tree is thousands of years old, it’s not a great leap of imagination to think, good grief, Jesus Christ wasn’t even born when that tree started. And so that gives people a perspective. It is almost impossible, I think, for humans to understand geological time. It’s really impossible for me. But to show an example of that, I’ve done two paintings in California, one of Point Reyes and one of the Tehachapi Mountains. Geologists have discovered that Point Reyes started in the Tehachapi Mountains, just east of Los Angeles, and has moved 310 miles north on the San Andreas Fault in 23 million years. They explained that it’s been moving north at the same speed that your fingernails grow. It’s gone 310 miles so far, and it’s still moving. Of course, it doesn’t move gradually like your fingernails do, it moves in fits and starts along the San Andreas Fault. Nonetheless, that’s an extraordinary thought, isn’t it? What started the whole show was working on Everest. I was above the Rongbuk Monastery, painting the North Face, and the monks in the monastery could see me perched up there in my down jacket, working away every day. But they couldn’t think what on earth I was doing. I wasn’t a climber, so what the heck was I doing? So they sent a young monk up to invite me into the monastery for tea. On the second occasion, this young monk came up to me and opened his hand, and in it he held an ammonite fossil. He pointed at Everest, and said, “That came from high up on the mountain.” And I thought, well blimey, it came from the ocean floor, so how long did it take? I researched it and With gin and hot water mixed into the watercolor, Foster paints Everest North Face from Above Rongbuk Monastery Looking South at 16,500'/5000m in Tibet for his Searching for a Bigger Subject: Watercolour Diaries from Everest and the Grand Canyon Journey, April 2007 (p. 5). RIGHT Tony Foster, Mt. Everest · From Ocean Floor to Roof of the World · c.45–50 Million Years, 2007 (p. 33) Inspired by the gift of an ammonite fossil found high up on Everest, Foster painted this smaller painting of the North Face of Everest and included the fossil in the artwork. 18
