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Leaf and Bark and Limb and Bough - Landscapes of Jerry Cutler
Gallery: "Theatre of the Plow, 1990‑1995"
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Theatre of the Plow was a working title for the first series of landscapes begun in the early 90's. These paintings were wholly invented with a minimal study of nature and were assembled out of a variety of motivations that seldom had to do with observation or realism. Instead they were concocted from three different but related sources: memories of a 1950s childhood on a mid-western dairy farm, the remarkable specimens of southern plant life native to North Florida, and my continuing interest in the human body as a subject for art.
The paintings call on early memories of a Wisconsin farmland, but their depiction is constructed theatrically rather than realistically. I was building a psychological space to play out those muddy early spring days when plowing begins. In this way I attempted to reconnect to a distanced childhood.
Always parallel to the remembered landscape of the rural north was the incredible floral scene of the south. With hammock vines wrapping and twisting around undulating tree branches, the Florida landscape has a biological drama that pits the enthusiasm of decay against the hysteria of growth. Death is continually integrated into a structure of dynamic life impulse.
Because I spent many years as a figure painter I naturally associated the energy of human anatomy to the geological and biological forms of the landscape. Nerve fibers, muscle bundles, and vascular configurations all find fluid associations with plowed fields, willowy branches, and flowing water. After years of conventional figure painting I had, in this series, found peculiar equivalents to the human body and placed them in a new context. |
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