"SHEPHERDS OF THE TREES" BY JUTTA MATTERN
Shepherds of the TreesLaura Bruce’s most recent, large format graphite drawings capture viewers and lure them into an enchanted, mythical world of forests and trees and ominous situations. We enter familiar but uncertain terrain, slowly approaching a mysterious no-mans-land. Laura Bruce is highly skilled in her handling of graphite. She covers the entire surface of the paper with miniscule lines that either gather to form dark areas and to add pictorial depth, or are applied sparsely and allow bare areas to emerge. These are sometimes strategically omitted to establish stark black-white contrasts in the drawings or to form empty areas
that look like they were stamped out or cut away. The various delicately developed gray nuances are formed by a type of “color bracket” and breathe life and turbulence into the drawings while adding a shimmering color quality, despite the fact that the works are always black and white.
But there is much more to discover here than skilled refinement. The drawings are dynamic and mysterious, they display forms that seem to gather and dissolve, and tell of a world threatened by humans or one comprised of apocalyptic images of dying forests. They are witness to our reckless handling of nature, which results in our inevitably demise. This apparent underlying atmosphere makes analyzing or interpreting Laura Bruce’s drawings a complex enterprise. Many of the works are subject to a menacing undertow that we happily allow to pull us along, drag us into the events, and that also compels us to navigate the place. Yet this is tricky, because as soon as a place to rest appears, we are enveloped by dust devil- or tornado-like spinning things, such as those depicted in Bruce’s black bushes, which rise from the ground and suck us into an uncontrollable whirlwind. These dynamic events are accompanied by isolated houses that seem threatened by indefinable dark smoke or fire formations that speed by, perhaps driven by the wind. Trying to escape the undertow, we stumble upon the blank white areas that lead to void-like spherical cavities. This makes it even harder to maintain our footing on the sloped undergrowth of the forest ground, particularly when it is swamped by a terrible deluge, as in the drawing Flood, where even the trees struggle to keep their hold. It is an indomitable force, but we remain the viewer and hope for salvation.
Laura Bruce creates scenes. They are places where we live and places of indispensable nature: the forest and its trees, which we still endeavor to tame and make hospitable, and, inasmuch, threaten. We press our way into mystifying worlds that can suddenly trick us.
Despite the looming menace in these drawings, they maintain an undeniably lyrical, even magical character, as can be seen in Stutter—and not only allow us to take part in the events, but also hint at appeasement. The trees are sometimes full of leaves, sometimes bare, and sometimes dead; they have thick bark or stripped trunks, and are staged by Laura Bruce as though subject to a very specific system of lighting. They structure the drawings into vertical and horizontal axes that establish a rhythm across surface. The
trees are also the elements that dominate the inherent narrative in Bruce’s drawings. Bruce’s compositional approach is strongly reminiscent of the floral ornamentalism of Jugendstil. They recall that era’s prevailing philosophy of natural rhythm and hint at the notion of the “sacred” forest—long a core element of fairy tales and fantasy novels. It
is a place often associated with religious devotion, where humans can enter into a relationship with the nature confronting them. It becomes a surface of projection for desire, fantasy, fears, and visions—a place of sacred wolves, forest gods, and trees endowed with numinous power.
Therefore it is not surprising when we imagine fleeting, stylized faces in tree trunks. They could be the faces of Rohan’s Shepherds of the Trees [1] who guard against evil and the destruction of nature by transforming into possessed creatures that embolden us and calm our fears.
Then, just as suddenly as we are pulled into the undertow of Laura Bruce’s pictorial narrative, she pulls us back out. She sends us to a stylized sculptural landscape made of wood, called Lake Day. In the drawings the moon seems to illuminate the forest, but Lake Day is lit by a single bare light bulb. The work is a spellbound lake landscape made from cut and carved wood. Every element in the piece is still, the ground is level, the wooden trees, some of which are painted a luminous greenish yellow, are immobile and strictly ordered. The lake surfaces have been cut out of the wooden base and convey a sense of calm. We are confronted in this work with a motionless scene, where we can follow our own rhythm and easily elude any sense
of threat.
1 The shepherds of the trees live in Rohan, which is translated as Land of the Horses. They are called Ents, Enyd, or Onodrim and in the novel Lord of the Rings, they are the protectors of the forests against Middle Earth. From J.R.R.Tolkien, Lord of the Rings, vol. II: The Two Towers, 1st edition, (Ballantine Books, 1965).
Jutta Mattern