This series was painted in fall 2021 onsite in the prairie at BRIT– the Botanical Research Institute of Texas at the Fort Worth Botanical Garden. BRIT’s mission is plant research and housing multiple herbarium archives inside a LEED platinum building.
Residency funded in part by Artspace 111 Gallery in Ft Worth. Curated by Erin Starr White with the Fort Worth Botanic Garden- BRIT.
Project Statement:
PRAIRIE investigates the two acre blackland prairie behind BRIT along University Drive— a prairie that is a palimpsest site of Trinity River floodplain, Native American lands, concrete parking lot, and prairie grasses today. Restored from concrete to planting in 2011 after the BRIT building opened in 2010, the prairie was burned to black soot in a prescribed burn in January 2021. The paintings were drawn and painted in October and November of 2021 completely on-site — first with drawing with pencil and then painting in oil. During the fall season, the sunflowers in the prairie were blooming yellow and then the blooms were almost all off by mid November. The successional growth of prairies from seed to plant to burn, back to seed, then to burn, then to seed, then to flower, informed the paintings. The five canvases record chronological time of the approach of cold weather which will then resiliently become warm spring again. Accompanying the paintings are pages of written Field Notes text which provide another layer of information about the site. Also accompanying the paintings are historical pages of botanical specimens of the plants in the paintings — pulled from the vast and renowned BRIT herbarium located on the second floor of the building with windows overlooking the prairie below. The BRIT prairie is a constructed wilderness in the middle of the city— and PRAIRIE investigates it through oil painting on-site over time — another event in the memory of the place. – Erika Huddleston
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