Norwegian Winter Landscape with an Elk and a Brown Bear 

Curator: Richard Friese invites us into a silent drama within 'Norwegian Winter Landscape with an Elk and a Brown Bear'. It’s a realistic painting that presents a brutal scene, yet also one of survival. Editor: The immediacy of the brown bear beside its downed prey sets an almost morbid tone—very powerful visual storytelling. There is death in an overwhelmingly snow-laden forest setting. I notice how Friese is handling tone here: look how he modulates all these seemingly endless layers of near-white, of grayed whites, and stark whites. Curator: And note that through the formal composition, Friese guides our gaze from the warm brown of the bear, a kind of tonal highpoint, to the muted landscape behind. The way the painter handles negative space, rendering bare, snow-heavy branches also brings this into very sharp relief. The dead elk on the ground contrasts the imposing and vital brown bear, so vital, so imposing, yet surrounded by so much white, signaling perhaps a larger system or universal struggle? Editor: Yes, there's an archetypal weight here, where the bear is rendered almost totemic in its stature next to its prey. There is such clear intent, with the two protagonists standing almost contrapuntally and very dramatically against their silent surrounding of woodland trees and snow. Consider also, the stark contrast between these dark colors and their starkly whitewashed environs as symbols perhaps of opposing forces, life and death engaged at the core of their being within what is effectively nothing? It's pretty masterful I would argue in the clarity and depth of meaning within these simple gestures and movements and arrangements. Curator: You bring up interesting symbolic tension—it seems that Friese wanted to convey raw survival, with an uncompromising approach. Friese seems keen, with a highly restricted palette, to foreground all of his characters within the landscape—foreground both the violence but also the sheer cold presence of snow in which survival has been hard one and that in fact perhaps there may be very little indeed left for everyone. A point that he seems to hint at as we scan our gazes away from these two individuals who will become isolated and removed the rest of landscape in front of us. It's interesting in this case that the work doesn’t propose either of the two beings with as superior to other. Editor: I agree. The symbolic use of naturalistic realism here is compelling, turning something brutal into something deeply meditative. A true spectacle for us, and maybe even some hard truths?