Artist Statement

No Mountains No Waterfalls: the Wondrous Prairie is an exhibitin of work examining natural terrain, indigenous life and culturally ascribed value within an area not fitting the traditional cannon of nineteenth century majestic, American landscape. The focus is directed towards the subtle and often overlooked beauty and strangeness found in the thickets, grassland prairies and flood plains of the North Texas and Southern Oklahoma region, specifically the Trinity and Red River corridors. In the work, concurrent expressions of absence and presence in nature make reference to the emergence and withdraw of other possibilities. In such manners, the exhibition explores ambiguity, while offering a new reading of sublime beauty, paying heed to the landscape’s open spaces and quiet moments, in a sort of deconstruction of the monumental spectacle that originally defined and later institutionalized natural beauty . Landscapes are shot from a low point of view, taking a small animal’s perspective as it moves through the space. Such perspectives create ambiguous spatial relationships, which are emphasized with saturated color.

The photographs may encourage the audience to reassess their notions of beauty in the American landscape, a necessary condition for reevaluation of how the viewer thinks about their relationship with this land.

Influencing the exhibition has been my year-round walks in this area. Photographic works reflecting local landscape convey a consonance between movement, sensory experience, land and thoughts. Mind, body and landscape become synchronized through the rhythm of walking. Similar to a thumbprint or an ocean wave, every walk, regardless of how many times it is traversed is a unique vision, a strange experience. Consequently, the possibility of the walk may remain ambiguous.

As our consumption of the land grows with a new and uncanny efficiency, it may be beneficial to reconsider our constructs of beauty in the landscape. The work in this exhibition participates in the redefining of beauty in the landscape by taking a feminine point of view, seeking the intrinsic worth of nature not captured in monumental visions of beauty. Works place emphasis on the subtlety of nature, showing it to be as significant as nature’s most abrupt visual transitions.