Coming Down to Earth: Patricia Underwood
Coming Down to Earth:
PATRICIA UNDERWOOD
Patricia Underwood, ELDER, 2021. Unique, Photo Silk-Screen, Linocut, Mixed Media on Wood Veneer, 42 x 42 x 1 inches
Patricia Underwood, TEMPLE, 2021
Photo Silk-Screen, Linocut, Mixed Media on Wood Veneer, 52 x 180 x 1 inches (4-part installation)
Guests to the gallery during the Coming Down to Earth exhibition are immediately greeted by a pair of fifteen-foot mixed media trees by regional artist, Patricia Underwood. Underwood’s study and passion for trees and their incredible legacy on the land have led to these incredibly striking, layered works which inhabit the front room of the show.
Patricia Underwood, WAILING, study #1, 2021.
Photo Silk-Screen, Linocut, Mixed Media on Wood Panel, 17.25 x 24 x 1 inches
Patricia Underwood, WAILING, 2021. Photo Silk-Screen, Linocut, Mixed Media on Wood Panel, 42 x 42 x 1 inches
“‘Wailing’ is an 800 year old oak tree. Her trunk has a circumference of twenty-three feet and she is part of Europe’s largest group of monumental oaks, located within a protected landscape park, the Dęby Rogalińskie, in central western Poland.” -PU
Patricia Underwood, STUMP, 2021. Photo Silk-Screen, Mixed Media on Arches, 40 x 40 x 1 inches
Humans have evolved in the last 200,000 years (a mere blip in earth’s 4.5 billion years of existence) from co-inhabiting our earthly territory with all other life forms on a relatively even playing field to becoming the most aggressively invasive species bar none, in the history of the planet. We are, as Richard Powers author of ‘The Overstory’ puts it “cashing in a billion years of planetary savings bonds and blowing it on assorted bling.” Our unique intellect that distinguishes us from other creatures (generative computation, promiscuous combination of ideas, use of symbols and abstract thought) seems to have come with one important element missing – responsible self-regulation. Our sense of connectedness to the planet and its inhabitants has all but left us. What it has brought on is an insatiable hunger for more…..of everything, at the expense of life itself.
Trees on the other hand, co-inhabit territory in a very different way, taking and giving over to suit the collaborative needs of other life forms with which they live. Forests are collectives where no one individual’s needs are met without a direct connection to the wellbeing of the whole. Competition in a forest is one form of collaboration. This collaborative wisdom is something we humans might learn from and perhaps be saved by. Using my own photo images of ancient trees silk-screened onto wood veneers, with additional layers of drawing, painting and printing, I expose environmental crises experienced from the trees’ perspective and create intense, powerfully animated compositions. My personal visual language illustrates nature’s urgings, her spoken language increasingly gone unheard by the ears, minds and hearts of those who inhabit and dominate her. I visualize these pleadings, revealing their ancient wisdom and urgency.
TEMPLE (detail) by Patricia Underwood
Installation of Patricia Underwood’s WAILING, study #1 for Coming Down to Earth at Candela Gallery
Patricia Underwood is a Washington based mixed media artist / printmaker who uses materials and symbols in sophisticated and subtle ways. Her work has been described as evocative, complex and richly textured. Content involves nature, human spirituality and healing. After studying the Japanese language, she began to interpret music (a universal language) through her own visual calligraphy, which finds its way into almost all of her work.
She has exhibited nationally and internationally, at venues including the Corcoran Museum and two solo shows in Warsaw in 2007. Her work is included in numerous private collections including the Artist's Book Collection of the National Museum for Women in the Arts, Washington, DC. and several other institutional collections.
Patricia Underwood obtained her BFA from Miami University, Oxford, OH, and her MFA from Washington University, St Louis, MO.
Coming Down to Earth will be on view at Candela Gallery through April 23, 2022.