20 September 2010

Landslides in Art Part 7 – Jennifer Williams

Posted by Dave Petley

Regular readers will know that I occasionally highlight a piece of art featuring landslides.  This is usually a piece of visual art (such as this and this), but occasionally it is a song or even an installation.  This time I thought I’d feature a piece of art by the American artist Jennifer Williams, who paints environmentally-orientated pieces using acrylic on birch panels.  Jennifer works mostly in the Pacific Northwest, where both the landscape and the sky is large and colourful.  This is reflected in her portfolio of work, which resonates strongly through its depictions of the landscape of hazards. 


I’d like to highlight here two pieces.  First there is a painting called lahar, created as part of a portfolio encompassing the natural regeneration of the Mount St Helens area:

Second, and for me more strikingly, is a piece entitled simply “Landslide”, painted in 2008, and visible through the Waterworks Gallery website:

To me this captures the chaos and ruin of the catastrophic earthflows we see in the Himalayas and other high mountain environments during heavy rainfall.  Amazing stuff.