Trees Catch Fire

Comment

Comment by Resident Curator on April 24, 2023 at 12:22pm

 

Curator’s Comments:

I enjoy the gently twisting tendrils of Roots, and other stem and root -oriented plants in your series of vertically stretched prints.  The delicacy of the line work, which I assume to be intaglio marks, are beautifully countered by the dense sections of blue-green printed materials on the top and bottom sections.  The central rectangle capturing the denser cluster of roots reads as a plate mark, and so I’m intrigued to see the lines grow beyond those set physical confines. I also appreciate the arching boundary edges along the perimeter. They suggest the interruption of a circular whole.  The adjacent work, Trees Catch Fire, respects the probable orientation of birds in the sky and roots pointing towards the ground, but something is clearly amiss in the alarm- red center. In the context of this red break in space and the work’s title, the open mouths of the birds in flight take on a more frightful resonance. Their intense distress is accentuated by the quietly contrasting white space in the image. I admire these intricate pieces from a technical perspective, but they clearly move beyond formal craft and involve more intricate narratives and painful truths about our relationships with the natural world.