Autry National Center

Location/Dates:

Museum of the American West at Griffith Park
July 17, 2009 - January 3, 2010

The flag of my disposition, out of hopeful green stuff woven
- Walt Whitman, Leaves of Grass

The details of nature – the grasses and leaves underneath our feet – may seem less significant than the mountains, waterfalls, and cliffs that occupy our imaginations, but they have an important role to play in the visual history of the American West. Since the nineteenth century, many Western artists have relied upon a detail-oriented approach to landscape in order to validate their work as “authentic.” Nineteenth century painters Albert Bierstadt and Thomas Moran filled their foregrounds with rocks, grasses, and meadows, reflecting their awareness of geology and natural history. Despite these connections, Western landscapes then and now often focus on the monumental and symbolic phenomenon of mountains, lakes, and canyons. Widely seen in paintings and photographs of the romantic era to the present, the traditional approach tends to view the landscape from a distance in order to encompass as much space as possible. Western landscapes thus often overlook the surface of the terrain in favor of grand vistas and the power and control that they imply.

Karen Kitchel’s Seasonal Overture challenges this approach by bringing the viewer into close contact with the landscape surface. The series consists of forty individual oil paintings on plywood panels constructed by the artist. Together, they represent four different places and seasons: Dead Grass Winter (Wyoming); Dead Grass Early Spring (Montana); Dying Grass Autumn (Colorado); and Mature Grass Summer (California). Just as the natural cycles of growth and death are charted through the change of season, so are the different colors, textures, and character of these distinct places.