PAINTING > Forest Floor

Low Down and Close Up: Paintings of the Forest Floor

Forests, in the collective imagination, are a place outside of civilization – primal, dark, and sometimes dangerous, home to outlaws, hermits, druids, witches, fairies and fauns. The contemporary view of wild forests ranges from a place of spiritual respite and natural purity (e.g., “virgin” forest) to the terrifying – a place where one can easily become lost or encounter dangerous wildlife. Old growth forest in particular evokes this idea of wildness. Teeming with life and activity on many levels, the forest often induces a feeling of being watched. Most of these works focus on the forest floor – where the forest’s dark creative energies seem particularly concentrated .

Loosely inspired by seventeenth century forest floor still life paintings, these paintings present the forest floor as a place of transformation, where very little seems inanimate. Mosses, ferns, stone, mushrooms and stumps in varying stages of decay all make an appearance.

The works begin with direct observation and are the products of an intimate experience of place. Paintings and drawings done on site become the basis for larger paintings completed in the studio, where memory and imagination enter the process.

forest floor lichen contemporary painting north cascades
oil on canvas over panel
60" x 40"
2016
contemporary painting Olympic forest floor cedar
oil on canvas
48" x 60"
2016
forest floor contemporary painting moss
oil on canvas
30" x 30"
2016
Grasses on Mount Sequoyah
oil on canvas
24 x 30"
2013
ozarks winter forest floor contemporary painting
oil on panel
24" x 28"
2016
contemporary painting ozarks forest floor
oil on canvas
38" x 60"
2015
contemporary forest floor painting ozarks
oil on panel
30" x 24"
2014
forest floor ozarks contemporary painting
oil on panel
30" x 22"
2014
Devil's Den Rocks
oil on canvas over panel
40 x 48"
2013
forest floor painting pzarks
oil on canvas over panel
42" x 32"
2012
contemporary painting  ozarks forest floor
oil on canvas
35" x 40"
2012