To draw mountains simply until they begin to disappear—that is how Jonathan Bragdon elegantly describes the process through which his landscape pictures come into being. At the center of Bragdon’s work—crafted in words, drawings, photographic self-definitions and poems—lies not so much his subject but the emotions it elicits within him. Bragdon expresses such feelings both playfully and earnestly to approach the real theme of his art—existence—a concept philosopher Martin Heidegger has defined as “being there” or “being-in-the-world.” On the occasion of his exhibition at Kunstmuseum Appenzell for which this book has been published, Bragdon created “landscape portraits” whose graphic simplicity belies the sublime dignity of the ideals they bring to life. In doing so he worked in the long tradition of graphic landscape artists and channeled the grand ambition of alpine chroniclers such as Caspar David Friedrich, Paul Cézanne and Ferdinand Hodler. While Bragdon’s “Landscapes” and “Consciousness Portraits” both focus on the visible, those experiences that can only be felt are his primary concern. In his large-scale graphite drawings where the concrete and the abstract hold equal sway, the invisible becomes visible.