I completed a painting residency in Birmingham, Alabama from mid-May through August 1, 2023. These 14 oil paintings, painted onsite in Jemison Park along Shades Creek in Shades Valley in Mountain Brook were made before the closure of the park by the city for a several month renovation. The final painting was finished just as the park closed in July.
The paintings record at a 1:1 scale various changing natural phenomena found within the 54 acre park, the Irondale Furnace Trail, new “Chief’s Trail”, and the tranquil Nature Trail between Overbrook and Beechwood. Forming the entrance to the neighborhood, the park was designed by landscape architect, Warren Manning, a protege of the Olmsted Brothers, in the 1920’s, as a bridle path, floodplain infrastructure, and scenic automobile parkway. The first painting in the series was painted sitting on the ground just outside the white painted brick perimeter wall of the very first house built in the new neighborhood of Mountain Brook– built to resemble Mount Vernon by talented developer Robert Jemison. The subsequent paintings were painted scattershot around the park and were inspired by a piece of decorative porcelain in the collection of the Birmingham Museum of Art.
Drawn in number 2 mechanical pencil and then painted in oil– the paintings, for the first time, used a powdered oyster pigment— gofun– which is translucent and somewhat resembles porcelain when mixed with linseed oil to make a paint. Birmingham receives around 56 inches of rain per year unlike Dallas (39 inches) and Austin (35 inches) where past series were painted.
Birmingham feels green…leafy! New York City, where a series was painted in The Ramble in Central Park in 2018, receives only 46 inches of rain a year. Discovering Alabama’s river-rich landscape, Birmingham’s location in the foothills of the Appalachian Mountains and Jemison Park’s lichen and moss covered trees as well as its arrow-straight loblolly pines led to a feeling of a cloud forest. The healing physical and mental health benefits of experiencing “urban wilderness” nature in the city, the healing hands felt from the presence of the extensive UAB hospital system, the ongoing healing post-COVID, the healing/healed landscape of iron-ore mining in Red Mountain, and the 2023 renovation of the Jemison Park historic landscape — which will remove invasive species and improve drainage and recreation for future generations– all inform Healing Landscape —
