“The world is too much with us”-Charlotta Westergren’s paintings at Patrick Painter

William Wordsworth, a 19th century English poet, would have liked this show. Charlotta Westergren’s paintings are more than gorgeously painted images of sheep and birds.

The paintings could very well  illustrate Wordsworth’s lines:

“Getting and spending, we lay waste our powers;
Little we see in Nature that is ours;/We have given our hearts away”

Influenced in part by Flemish tapestries and Dutch masters, the artist makes reference to  the historical to bring the viewer into a finely observed, detailed and hyperreal  world in the present where survival, evasion, resistance, escape are all  there for the less faint of heart to take in.

In addition to the paintings there is an installation titled “Fucking” which humorously celebrates Nature with scanned images of flowers from “Martha Stewart Living”.

Artists like Jeff Koons and William Wegman frequently use animals to explore various aesthetic and social issues which art historian Tom Holert in his recent piece in Artforum  on photographer Josephine Pryde calls ”the nastiness of cute.”

 

http://www.charlottawestergren.com/

http://patrickpainter.com/exhibitions.html