PATTY HALLER
November 6-29, 2020
Meet & Greet:
Saturday, November 7, 2020
Noon - 3pm
To view the Virtual Tour, CLICK HERE
I use imagery of Pacific NW forests to create spatial botanical worlds. These imagined landscapes explore scientific field analysis, art history and color theory. The forest is observable and measurable, but being human in the forest is spiritual and unknowable. I love both conceptions. Forest conditions create an internal logic for plants to grow. Stems weave and wander in a search for light, and over time they achieve their unique and graceful shapes. We walk in the woods and see the horizon through the airy spaces, but only the abstraction of leaves and branches in the layered vegetative space. It is this complexity and variety of seeing that I want to capture. Like everyone else in 2020, I spent much of the year at home with family or working alone in the studio. I spent time reading how Northern Renaissance workshops constructed imagery on wood panels. I read the writings of David Hockney and Frank Stella to help me nurture more interesting pictorial space. I made color charts to find full spectrum color palettes and natural pigments that gave me comfort. Surprisingly, I thought back often to my 19-year-old self, a quiet forestry student who noticed things about forest plants that still fascinate me today. I think subconsciously I pivoted from emphasizing the large dataset aspect of my forest paintings to creating harmonious gatherings of plant shapes in space, because togetherness is what I wanted then and now.