Autumn Landscape 

Curator: Robert Julian Onderdonk, best known for his landscapes, particularly his depictions of Texas, may have captured this "Autumn Landscape" en plein air. The impressionistic style immediately catches the eye. Editor: It definitely evokes a feeling of cool stillness, doesn’t it? The colors are muted, save for that small copse of fiery red on the left, but that thick impasto gives it such palpable texture. I can almost feel the crisp autumn air. Curator: Look closer at that impasto, though. The way he’s layered the oil paint creates a real sense of depth, and you’re right, texture. Considering that Onderdonk had extensive formal training in art and even served as director of the Dallas Art Association, I find myself focusing less on its stylistic elements, and thinking about the labor embedded into plein-air practice itself and the sheer amount of material required in making an oil painting. Editor: Interesting. To me, that red copse just leaps forward symbolically; autumn is such a loaded time, full of themes of decline but also brilliant color, and transition. It’s echoed in the green of the foreground, the gold of the trees to the right…it's all so transient, that beauty. Curator: It speaks to a cycle of material expenditure and renewal too; what is so visible with Onderdonk is a focus on capturing that seasonal feeling by documenting the state of matter at hand. Editor: Exactly, there’s something eternal represented in the passing. Perhaps that accounts for the continuing resonance. I mean, we're still here, contemplating his choice of those autumnal shades. Curator: I’m thinking more and more about how such a painting then moves within circuits of value, galleries, private collections, ultimately forming how the perception of artists' lives turns into consumable stories about nature as an investment vehicle. Editor: It gives me more to ponder than I thought when I initially looked at it! Curator: Me too. The more that I have researched his work in that respect, I continue to challenge any ideas of the inherent or timeless symbolic landscape that remains in museums.