A PAINTING THAT WAS
SUPPOSED TO BE
ALL ABOUT WHITE
2003
42" x 60"
oil on canvas
SOLD

Pristine landscapes no longer exist. Now that fingerprints have smudged every square inch of this planet, we’re left as a society to redefine natural beauty. To my eyes, some of the most stunning visuals take shape when nature and humans collaborate. My paintings explore the moments in which each contribution is perfectly balanced and influenced by the other.

For example, I’ve been working for several years on a series of paintings influenced by a place that sounds mundane – a parking lot – but at certain times of the year, transforms into a beautiful landscape that has haunted me since my first glimpse, six years ago. My view was from a renovated warehouse loft several stories above the lot, where downtown St. Paul postal workers parked. The first snowstorm of the season arrived after the postal workers had parked their cars. At the end of the day, the postal workers drove away, leaving irregularly shaped “holes” in the snow-layered lot.

My most recent work also explores another nature/human collaboration. Around my yard is utilitarian fencing designed not for looks but to keep out the deer. In winter it’s occasionally transformed into sculpture by freshly fallen snow.

Rather than trying to depict the scene realistically, which quickly becomes abstract when taken out of context, I rely on abstraction to explore the beauty of a serendipitous moment. Abstraction removes the easy references that would return the viewer to the mundane – a mere parking lot or a deer fence.

 

250 Third Avenue N., Studio 228
Minneapolis, MN 55401

612.333.9205

Copyright 2006 Wendy Fernstrum

No images or text may be reproduced without permission of the artist