In Ovid’s Metamorphosis, Cyparissus transforms into a cypress tree after experiencing irrevocable loss. Apollo calls for Cyparissus “to stand wherever mourners are,” erecting the cypress tree as a totem of grief to alter the landscape.
My paintings encounter seasonal change as a study of emergence through loss. By abstracting and estranging landscapes with a graphite and oil paint sticks across smooth mylar film— I work with these surfaces as if they are frescos, creating an interior emanation to the painting, reflecting the changing seasons and fog of the northern environments I am from. I use the Cypress tree as a central and mimetic figure in my paintings, simultaneously a subject, and a point of deviation within the landscape. Cypress trees are planted in cemeteries, on farms and on the roadside as signs of mourning, to divide topographies, and to protect fields from the elements. The tree is similarly central to my study of the four contained walls of Livia’s imagined garden from the frescos of Villa of Livia (30-20 BCE), honored as the focal and grounding point, creating an interioriority within the surrounding environment.
Informed by the linear elements of architectural drawing and the spontaneity of freehand, my paintings map landscapes as emergent and porous, circulating the figure of the cypress tree through its distortions, playfulness, and a diversity of textures as a foundational archetype of transformation.