FRACTURE-SCAPES REVELATORY FINE ARTEst. 2026
Thomas Farmer
[CV]
PO BOX 703 Black Diamond, Alberta, Canada
studio@fracturescapes.art
Instagram - [@fracturescapesart]
THE LIVING FRACTURE
Fracture-Scaping begins with naturally found wood fractures. I read their ridges, recesses and planes as fields of landscape possibility, using chromatic interpretation to reveal rather than design the composition. The fracture remains the governing form and a participant in authorship.
PRESERVED FORM, PAINTED INTERPRETATION
Interpretation remains confined to naturally fractured surfaces. Unaffected exterior wood and bark are preserved, and expressive fracture geometry is not mechanically reshaped. Minimal preparation is permitted only on the horizontal base plane when required for stable presentation.
PROVENANCE AND STEWARDSHIP
The practice preserves each work’s available connection to its source, while By Nature works require documented geographic provenance and chain of custody.
Explore the art...
[BY NATURE GALLERY]
[GENESIS GALLERY]
Learn more about the practice...
[PHILOSOPHY]
[CONSERVATION]
[METHODOLOGY]
[EXPEDITIONS]
Locate or investigate a registered work...
[REGISTRY INDEX]
Expeditions:
Time, Place, and Authority
Fracture-Scaping begins outside the studio. Each expedition enters a source landscape in search of naturally found wood fractures whose existing forms offer possibilities for interpretation.
The objective is not conventional timber volume or the manufacture of artistic supports. It is the selective recovery of unusual fracture conditions that already exist.
THE FIELD ENCOUNTER
The expressive fracture must be found rather than created by the artist. Its ridges, recesses, voids and separations are considered in the condition encountered, without assuming that the event responsible for the fracture can be identified.
A specimen is selected for the landscape possibilities already present in its form. Artistic interpretation may eventually reveal those possibilities, but it cannot manufacture the fracture or mechanically redesign its expressive geometry.
TIME AND PLACE
Each recovered fracture receives a field specimen identity immediately after recovery. The identifier records its expedition, site, specimen and recovery year—for example, 1.2a-2026—without prematurely assigning it to an artwork collection.
In-situ photography, field tagging, recovery date and geographic location preserve the specimen’s connection to the place in which it was found. Species is recorded where reasonably identifiable.
Individual expedition pages may publish precise source locations when disclosure is responsible and safe. Sensitive, dangerous or private sites may instead be represented by an appropriate nearby waypoint while the precise internal record remains unchanged.
AUTHORITY TO RECOVER
The ability to encounter a fracture does not by itself establish the authority to remove it. Field recovery requires an authorization appropriate to the land, material and intended artistic use.
Material on Crown land is recovered under the applicable government authorization. Recovery from private land requires express landowner permission. In either case, the authority record becomes part of the specimen’s provenance and chain of custody.
Current permits and written approvals are maintained in the
[AUTHORIZATIONS]
record. The record will expand as additional jurisdictional pathways are established.
POTENTIAL, NOT PREDETERMINED
Recovery does not make a specimen a completed Fracture-Scape. Selected fractures enter studio stabilization and assessment under their original field identities without receiving an FSN or FSG collection designation.
Under the current standard, only a resolved interpretation can receive a completed collection designation. Fracture-Scapes by Nature requires satisfaction of the current artistic, material, field, studio and provenance standards; resolved works retained for development, reflection or incomplete provenance may instead enter the Genesis Collection.
Some recovered specimens may remain unresolved. Others may fail materially and never become artworks. Their absence from a completed collection is part of an honest progression from field encounter to artistic resolution.
RECORDED EXPEDITIONS
Individual expedition pages return the field process to place. Through landscape, in-situ and recovered-specimen photography, each record introduces the environment encountered and selected fractures entering studio development. Expedition summaries can be located through the registry index.