the temperate son

I wanted to talk a little more about this series.

I've always had a fascination with the rural north Georgia landscape I grew up in, especially in winter when you can see the bare forms of things. There's a lot of drama in the shapes of trees taken over with invasive kudzu and wisteria.

I began really observe these landscapes when I started painting seriously, and I was particularly taken with the contrast in the forms of invasive strangling vines and our native muscadine. Instead of strangling, muscadines use their tendrils to climb trees just to get to the sunny part of the canopy, then they let their tendrils fall off and sort of lean on the branches. The only time i've seen muscadines affect their host trees in a negative way (at least observably) is when there is an external stressor, like a sickness in the host tree or a physical collapse of the land they are growing on. I've become very taken with the manner of the muscadine since then, and all of the implications, but that's another story. More broadly, It tuned me onto the difference of form between native and invasive species.

If you go to an area in north georgia that is free of invasives and relatively undisturbed, you'll see that there is little evidence of competition. I mean this from a visual standpoint as an artist, not as an ecologist.

The different plants are arranged evenly in the leaf litter, in their own groups. Many of them staying small, with well-formed elegant leaves with interesting patterns. It's sort of like how sculptures are arranged in a gallery, they aren't fighting for space.

think of that in contrast to an urban environment with kudzu and privet. They are growing over each other in thickets, blocking out light and tearing each other down. There was one place I used to frequent where a family of kudzu had overtaken some poplar, growing up the lot of them and then tearing them all down. When I found the site everything was dead.

I have nothing against invasive species, in fact I'm quite fond of all of them, but that is also another story. This series is about the landscape of atlanta, the interactions of invasive and native species, and the interactions of the people and the structures they build. All of these inseperate from the others.

as I mentioned in the gallery, some of these are done from memory of actual events and some are done from imagination. Ill talk about one I did from imagination first.

this is tentatively called great brome, after an invasive grass from the Mediterranean. It's largely inspired by my own experience navigating the southern appalachain landscape in summer. While of course it is open to interpretation, to me it depicts a figure who has cut away the invasive great brome to reveal a native blueberry. The tree behind them is choked with some strangling vine. The figure is a reflection of the soil and sky. you can see the blue of the sky reflected in the figure, as well as the gold glow of the soil.

that's how I view all the characters in this series, as a human-shaped part of the broader landscape.

this is one done from memory, of a may day protest I attended. It depicts what the title says it does, Three photographers at a protest.

The 2025 may day protest at the capital was the first i'd attended. After living in rural georgia it was inspiring to see so many like-minded active people, and I was humbled by the organizers. All of us protesters were corralled by them, allowing us all to express our anger while they maintained a calm and protective aspect. I saw that peace and anger were not mutually exclusive, it felt very natural to be angry when the oppression is as egregious as it is.

These three photographers were walking alongside us as we marched, and I thought they exemplified the scene well.