Pine Tree Suite

Artist’s Statement

“Painting is the art which reminds us that time and the visible come into being together, as a pair. The place of their coming into being is the human mind, which can coordinate events into a time sequence and appearances into a world seen. With this coming into being of time and the visible, a dialogue between presence and absence begins. We all live this dialogue.”

— John Berger

Pine Tree Suite was conceived as an homage to my nephew, Wallace Briggs Westfeldt who died on Friday, April 4, 2008* in a snowboard accident. The twenty-two panels of oil on canvas measure six feet, one inch high which was Wallace’s height. The choice of Colorado spruce and pine trees as a motif was because of their abundance in the mountains where he “rode” and lived. The nature of the trees’ verticality, the boughs’ horizontal rhythms, their sensation of weight and the air of the in-between spaces were compelling as a way into engagement with remembrance; to literally mark relationship through gesture, color, light, and space.

*all works are oil on canvas, 2014