The reservoir at Pyramid Lake is off US Route 5, 50 miles northwest of LA.

It was attractive for me to photograph the reservoir and its surroundings because it was so different than the northeast landscape where I've lived all my life.

Several months passed before I was able to see the results of my photography—the large panoramas are digital stitches of almost 100 high-resolution digital photos requiring some 40 hours of technical computer work to form a single image.

As I became familiar working with the California photos in my Brooklyn studio, the landscape of Pyramid Lake came to seem less about difference than distance. Distance is the subject of these paintings.

I originally photographed the reservoir in the spring of 2009, when I came upon it while touring the mountains in Angeles State Park. Last fall I doubled back to photograph the same subjects in the same places—appearances were different even if the places were recognizable enough for me to find the same vantage of the lake and the same tree on a back road.

Looking at the large detailed photographic prints a visitor asked me why I painted on the photographs. Without reflecting I replied—to make it real. These photos are enormously descriptive—precise in location and moment. But it is painting — the application of color, material and shape on surfaces — that constructs a logic of viewing to bring the experience of these works into the physical present.

James Hyde, 2013