Winter Forest: Dogwood

Comment

Comment by Nikki Coulombe on January 24, 2021 at 8:39pm

I appreciate your putting words to the subjective, and really attempting to see what artists might not even be able to articulate themselves. I think you have nailed it, as far as describing my overall work, though varied as it is, as sorting through order and chaos in nature, no matter what the medium. Thanks so much, Kristen.

Comment by Resident Curator on December 20, 2018 at 10:01am

Curator’s Comments:

I enjoy the winding white vines cutting through the tangled colored variants in Winter Forest: Dogwood. It’s a compact piece visually, offering dense passages of saturated color.  Without a horizon or traditional figure-ground relationship, the foliage is actually quite abstract.  The title clues me into the subject, but the allover surface treatment also functions on a purely formal level.  The larger proportion of yellow and green wash in the bottom right corner breaks up the warmer hue pattern, without anchoring the intertwined stems.  I like seeing the range in your work, from presenting close up views of individual floral elements, to this more expansive approach.  Predominating through your portfolio of paintings seems to be a sustained awareness of tension between order and chaos in nature.  I was very happy to see you’d posted this new work, and hope there’s more to come.