Creating invented environments that are at once alluring and unsettled, Kirsten Lofgren’s paintings investigate the power dynamics between humans and a wider natural world in the throes of rapid climate change. The work explores the development of personal relationships with the unrestrained power and fragility of nature through observational research and the process of artmaking. The visual and visceral experiences of being with the land radiates through color and gesture. 

While using the languages of landscape painting and abstraction as tools for expression and world building, the work destabilizes viewer expectations of connection with nature. Rather than a symbol of conquest, Lofgren’s naturescapes reveal the complex beauty of the world already surrounding us. Pulling on tiny spaces of wild in the city and remote hikes throughout the immensity of the American landscape, she creates expansive works that fill the view and activate a sense of vulnerability. 

This sustained engagement with natural spaces also forms layers of memories which proliferate imagined worlds full of past and future lives. Primordial oceans and post-apocalyptic floods interweave with the vital presences of humanity in this moment. The energy of many lives throughout geologic time warps and folds into a singular experience, captured through a primal process of painting. The space and rhythm of the work create a sense of immediacy and a viscous rush that show a powerlessness to humanity’s outsized effect on our global system alongside a deep and active love for the beauty and complexity of our world.