Overview
Jill Lear in her studio
It starts with a single tree in the landscape: ancient, complex, grotesque even, and witness to history. - Jill Lear
Jill Lear is a painter whose primary subject and inspiration are trees in the landscape as a means of transcribing not only the experience of being in, and thinking about Nature but also the way in which we process the world around us. It begins with a single tree in the landscape, Jill notes the latitude and longitude, and then she systematically considers the space and form of the tree. Like Gorky before her Lear’s paintings are a study of space between the subjects. Her paintings are neither embedded in realism, nor are they committed abstractions. Rather her paintings are a mapping of the experience. It is precisely this complexity and ambiguity that makes the pieces so compelling. Distilling the elements that make up these ancient beings until the white space invites as much investigation as her color and lines. With post impressionistic influences with vivid colors, geometric forms and brush strokes suggestive of Cezanne, Lear’s trees have a striking aesthetic appeal.
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