Autumn Landscape 1941

Curator: Prudence Heward's "Autumn Landscape," an oil painting created in 1941, is before us. What strikes you first about it? Editor: It’s… intense. A mix of unease and beauty, like the woods are holding their breath. The yellows are feverish, but they are offset by dark strokes of trees and underbrush. Curator: Heward's use of oil-paint in thick, deliberate strokes lends the scene a certain tangible weight, doesn’t it? One can almost feel the density of the forest floor. She was quite involved with labor activism; I wonder if that informs her interest in raw materials like this. Editor: Possibly. The trees reach up like supplicating arms, drawing our eye upward toward the bare branches near a sort of hazy sun, which could reference spirituality or, quite simply, light. Curator: The expressionistic style aligns with some of the German art movements gaining traction at the time, artists reflecting the turbulence of their own socio-political climates with similar choices in brushstroke and subject matter. Editor: The landscape is clearly a symbol. But of what? Perhaps a confrontation with our own mortality, like the fading light signals something's end. Autumn always symbolizes that transition. Curator: Or perhaps reflecting on the limited access to artist supplies in a society increasingly at war—we could consider what was present or absent. Shortages of paint forced some artists to repurpose or even reconsider their processes, which altered the aesthetics of their products. Editor: Regardless of any material limitations, Heward manages to distill the emotional heart of autumn. I feel that sense of looming quiet we feel when winter comes. It makes one think about stillness and cycles. Curator: I appreciate your emphasizing of that cyclical understanding, especially when thinking about how we are each involved in artistic consumption in a loop of influence and making ourselves. Editor: Absolutely. Looking at it this way definitely makes one see the cycles inherent in nature and also art itself. Thank you.