Michelle Blade “Into the Forest”
Set against the backdrop of a global pandemic and fraught political times, Into the Forest is an amalgamation of experience and emotion made while sheltering in place. Taking note from her most intimate and immediate surroundings, Blade’s paintings depict a collection of quotidian scenes: the last blush of day, her children in the garden, the remnants of a meal, flowers in stages of decay, mountainous landscapes and towering trees under radiant moons. These meditative moments of solitude within a California landscape take note from the natural world and closely examine its stillness, strength, persistence and metaphysical qualities.
Using exploration and the human condition as a broad starting point, Blade draws from the theories and visual vernacular of Transcendentalism, Magical Realism and Romanticism. Her images are full of divine light, and portraits of totem-like individuals submersed in psychedelic color-fields. Her aesthetic, which endows the simple and mundane with preternatural qualities, is made by applying numerous atmospheric layers of acrylic ink that bleed, bloom and pulse with mystical tones. Her luminous landscapes and figures are often pushed toward abstraction by the essence of the water based media. Blade believes this limbo serves as a physical placeholder for the mysterious, thus creating an opportunity to reinterpret and draw into question the essence of the everyday.
Driven by the inescapable qualities of the natural world this exhibition is about curiosity and one's search for meaning and place within the cosmos. The perceived energy Blade depicts lays behind physical appearances. It’s a world of benevolent energy flowing through and protecting life. The title of the exhibition “Into the Forest”, is not simply an escapist fantasy but also a rallying call to dive more deeply into ones reality and reassess our connection to the health of our afflicted world. In the words of Mary Oliver, using “Attention as devotion”.
Words and images via Wilding Cran Gallery LA.
