by JANIS TOMLINSON, Director, Exhibitions & Cultural Programs
National Academy of Sciences, Washington DC, 2002, September 23- December 31, 2002
Ranging in subject from old growth forests in New England to panoramas of Tanzania, Prilla Smith
Brackett’s landscapes attest to her ongoing engagement with environmental issues.
The artist’s Remnants series (1995-1998) encompasses four groups of paintings: Old Growth in the
White Mountains, Big Reed Reserve, Communion, and Silent Striving. Like sepia-toned photographs,
large, monochromatic drawings of old growth forests might suggest a quiet and long-forgotten place,
were it not for the fragments veiling the landscape. This interruption of the viewer’s experience of
nature becomes more apparent in the large paintings of the communion series, where fragments
drained of color are superimposed on the otherwise pristine view and the urban intrudes upon the
natural.
Fragmentation leads to the analytic dissection of the natural and the urban in the Silent Striving
series. Vignettes of nature and trees are captured in separate panels. Visual echoes suggest that all
the images have a common origin, that urban was once pristine, as the juxtapositions bring home
the human impact on the environment.
Brackett’s most recent work are triptychs expressing a more peaceful co-existence of the human and
the natural. The side images were inspired by views of the Blue Ridge Mountains, the central images
by scenes around Brackett’s home in Cambridge, Mass. The sense of decay and forceful intrusion –
so visible in the earlier Remnants series – is no longer apparent, as the very simple architecture of
the urban environment enhances the dignity and intricate beauty of trees.
At the outset of the nineteenth century, the German painter Caspar David Friedrich painted
masterful portraits of trees, seemingly imbuing them with a personality. Brackett’s trees have a
similar strength, her landscapes a comforting serenity. Although her theme is human intervention,
we get the sense that nature will withstand many indignities, offering us time to rethink the
repercussions of our actions.
©2002 Janis Tomlinson