Landscape #2: Kendra Larson Interview

KL: Our current generation’s sense of place is difficult to pin down, which I’m sure every generation says. The way in which we see ourselves in the world and the way we define our place in society can’t be described without noting globalization, the internet, and web-based social networking. I believe that we, or at least I, walk through the woods differently than my parents did when they were in their late 20s.  For one thing, I rarely feel lost with my GPS. I never feel alone with my cell phone in my pocket. When I go camping and stare out to the night sky I have an app on my phone to tell me what constellations I am looking at. Through Facebook I can live vicariously through my friend’s photos and travel anywhere. I realize that sounds dramatic and I don’t think experiencing the outdoors through a picture is the same as experiencing nature. I guess I’m just saying it must be different. Yes, I feel a sense of awe and wonder of the sublime, probably similar to the type Thomas Cole, Albrecht Bierstadt, and Casper David Friedrich felt when they beheld the glory of a dark wooded valley. The difference is, I can’t help but know that, with a population of nearly 7 billion, no land is untouched. The forest trees, subtly planted in rows, remind me that Wilderness is, in many ways, a farce. Maybe our generation feels landscape more deeply because we are deprived of it.

Technology may be making people appreciate nature more. Evidence in the media, such as the show Lost, movie Avatar, or Twin Peaks Series, leads me to believe that our generation has a strong fascination with the power and supernatural side of the environment. This appreciation is a somewhat new idea; back when the NW was being pioneered, people were experiencing giant trees for the first time. Fueled by fear, people were paid to eliminate trees some hundreds of years old. Not only have we moved past these ideas as a society, but I see the Pacific Northwest landscape as being a complex mix of paradise and tragedy. In a recent curatorial statement for my upcoming show at Willamette University’s Roger W. Rogers Gallery, Andries Fourie put it well: Larson feels that her generation, buffeted by political and economic uncertainty, seeks refuge in their nostalgic view of the landscape as a powerful and unchanging spiritual force and lynchpin of Northwest identity.  No doubt it also evokes the innocent and uncomplicated pleasure of childhood.

10,000: You use color in a very distinct manner. There are bold, bright hues surrounded by muted tones and even black and white. How does your use of color coincide with your approach to landscape?

KL: This is something that is always evolving, changing for me. To me black-and-white areas represent the solid, logical, representational side of nature. Often the monochromatic areas record the straightforward physical geography of a place.  The bright, techno-colored areas are reserved for documenting the invisible. Often color is used to symbolize phenomena that are not seen such as sound. Sometimes I like to contrast color schemes to create a focal point.  I also like the challenge of working with certain color schemes and exploring the emotional effects made possible by using color next to black-and-white.  I often look to cinema for notes on color. Like the movie “A Single Man”, the saturation of color changes with the mood of the scene. Color serves to tell the audience that there has been a shift. The idea of color coming and going is something I consider.

10,000: You received your MFA from the University of Wisconsin in Madison, Wisconsin, your BFA from the Pacific Northwest College of Art in Portland, Oregon, and have studied art in Florence, Italy.  How have these vastly different environments played a part in your artwork, if at all?

KL: I grew up in Oregon and have always been in awe of the outdoors. Nature has always scared me yet made me feel secure. This fascination with Place informs my work today.

I wasn’t in Italy long enough to see how the experience changed my work. I think being there, alone and unable to speak Italian, made me realize that I enjoy the company of others.  I also became more curious about travel, which is part of why I did an artist residency in New Zealand in 2005. My painting, “The Cave”, is about a cave I went spelunking in. In our wetsuits and helmets we got to see green glow worms hanging from the ceiling. They glow in order to trick flies into thinking the light is a way out of the cave, then they catch and eat them. Eventually these worms become flies and I guess you know where this is going.

In 2006, when I moved to Madison for graduate school, I became nostalgic for the Northwest. I deeply missed the mountains and crisp air. One of my professors at the time, T.L. Solien, mentioned to me that all of his compositions were flat and he thought it was because he was from the mid-west. With that in mind, I began to understand that my circular, undulating compositions were a product of my home back in the Cascades. In Madison, my work became directly about specific places in Oregon. My own psychology (anxiety, fear, frustration, stress) fueled the Romanticism in these paintings.

When I returned to Oregon in 2009, I settled in and reacquainted with Portland, only to turn around and travel. Last winter I went to Argentina and spent the holidays with family in Bariloche, a little mountain village bordering Chile. On New Years Eve, we ate outside (summer there) and felt a small earthquake (we even watched an antler chandelier sway). My painting, “Bariloche”, got its beginnings from looking up through the pine trees that night. Back in Oregon, I have been camping a lot with friends. My most recent paintings are from experiences/ places in Eastern Oregon.

My sense of place and understanding of what makes the west coast different has been shaped by both media and other artists. Thomas Cole once wrote:

 You see no ruined tower to tell of outrage – no gorgeous temple to speak of ostentation; but freedom’s offspring – peace, security, and happiness… And in looking over the yet uncultivated scene, the mind’s eye may see far into futurity. Where the wolf roams, the plough shall glisten; on the gray crag shall rise temple and tower – mighty deeds shall be done in the now pathless wilderness. – Essay on American Scenery (1836)

This quote can be taken in a few different ways. The potential he talks about can be in experiencing, appreciating, or exploiting the land. Seeing Cole’s paintings, I believe he loved the land and wanted to promote experiencing nature in a responsible way, not exploiting it. I think today we see the world differently because Cole painted the way he did. Cole’s words rings true today. Personally, I want to make a connection to my home, have a strong place in the world. I could have become a farmer and made that connection by getting my hands in the soil, but painting provides that connection for me.  I’m not yet sure how being back in Oregon changes the nostalgia in my work, but I am eager to find out.