NOVEMBER 10-28, 2004
Intense landscape paintings exploring the inevitable wild growth of nature overcoming man’s organization.
A mile east, the oxen nose-blow steam clouds into the grave chill, puff, shake soaked yoke. He heaves a mattock at a stubborn stump. Through her still-young pout she sucks at damp hair. After hewing pine, she suggests apples which he bites wide-mouthed, wincing with the sour. Oxen huff. Let it rot, she says plainly. He over-arms the core at underbrush.
Two hundred years of light drips this clearing. No apple baubles: a post-fruitful palette limns limbs, their osteoancient gestures canvas a feral orchard, gouged, layered, verdure and crowded, yet sky and white, frame woolly chance as harvesting this delight.
-Jonathan Bennett