Disrupted Gardens

Disrupted Gardens

Paintings: a surface mitigates the fixture of materials with the motility of imagination—a “world of the text” subject to medium, design, decay, intention, whim, accident (happy or not).

Something . . .abstract? surreal? real? . . . this way comes. Eco-future: be aware, beware, be wary. Hope to continue to be. So lush, productive, layered—so much to see and feel …

A surface evolving: it appears to be changing even as you watch it, as if it were a movie, a “moving picture,” a documentary-in-the-making of something impossible that became improbable and now has become real.

Should you fear it, evidence of instability, consequence of pollution gone wild? Should you study it, a portrait of survival through adaptability? Should you laugh at it—or with it—in the madness of its beauty and enormity? With so much to explore, the eye resists leaving it.

Creatures that build themselves from . . . anything: sedge, petroleum, flowers, offal, tinker toys: they design themselves to suit survival. Junkyard Chimaeras, crazy accidents of DNA and environmental poisons, oozy and comical and frightening and riveting almost-beings—they exude themselves even as they recede back into the cover of woods and water (what’s left of them).

Brushstrokes broad or intensely fine, landscape and nightmare, depth and immediacy, and color, color, color: crowded with effort and growth, the wholeness floods, tumbles off the edges of canvas.

You may find yourself speculating, “It’s alive….” You may soon be right.

E. L. Risden, March 2024

Visit E. S. Louis’ website – pen name of E. L. Risden