Amidst Trees

Bloomington

Artistry, 1800 W. Old Shakopee Rd., Bloomington, MN 55431

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The word “amidst” suggests slow wandering and deep looking. Photographer Linda Gammell and painter Holly Newton Swift invite a dialogue between drawing, painting, and photography as they explore the quiet, meditative solitude that they find and document while amidst trees.

Gammell’s photographs capture the fragmented, decaying, dislocating, and visually awkward details of the forest while separating the background through blurred space, mimicking how the human eye moves through space—incapable of taking it all in simultaneously. “I hope the natural world as expressed in this work is seen as intimate and imaginary.”

Likewise, Swift discovers dramatic contrasts as she explores and documents two specific locations in her work: Old Cedar Grove at Cascade National Park and orchards at the Minnesota Arboretum. The resulting drawings and paintings reflect the transitory aspects of light and atmosphere that continually reveal and dissolve color and form. “The juxtaposition of the wilder to the cultivated treed areas heightened my sensitivity to ways I see order and harmony in nature.”

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