Trine Bumiller is the most well-known type of landscape painter. He captures the expanse of Western terrain in oil, but he does it on every tree, branch to branch, branch to branch.
Bumiller paints beautiful things in small ways and has magic in his technique, an intimacy that is only available when an artist examines their ego and resists the urge to use a painting to capture a full range of mountains or the whole expanse of an open. heaven-instead recognizes that the majesty of nature is best rendered by zooming in on the details.
As a scene painter, he is most interested in the way light passes through an individual leaf or wave of water or how the bright colors of a spring bloom beautifully in the solid tone of the skeletal branch that nourishes the birth. its.
Bumiller edits his scenes like a photographer. He cuts the branches of the tree or the ends of their highest shoots, so the spectators are focused in the middle, on the soul of these living things. Her flowers, seedlings and vines are strangers, but always seem to share their most personal details when we look at them.
Throughout his career, Bumiller has balanced this narrow perspective by placing his paintings in series of works or adjustments that address larger ideas and issues. His “100 Paintings for 100 Years” is an amalgam of plant and water closeups that come together to evoke the overall geography of Rocky Mountain National Park. His “In Memoriam” features 13 photos of individual golden spruce trees that tell the complete story of an entire endangered species.
His latest solo exhibition at the Emmanuel Gallery, titled “Garden of Eden,” falls into that project category. The show has 17 paintings of random trees, shrubs and grasses but they are grouped together to form something like a formal garden. The oil paintings on the panel surround the gallery visitors on all sides, creating an immersive interior experience that reflects the feeling of being in a beautiful backyard in the abundance of spring when the energy of nature is on full display.
Bumiller offers not only an exhibition of recent work, but also a surrounding environment, magnified by the fact that he painted horizontal black stripes on all of Emmanuel’s walls before hanging his work on them.
The lines, he says in his artist statement, are a nod to Emmanuel’s history as a church; he remembers seeing such lines in old cathedrals when he visited Italy as a student. But they double as something like a slotted wooden fence containing his conceptual garden in a single space.
He works. Emmanuel, built in 1879, was then a sacred place, and it identifies itself as Denver’s oldest standing religious structure. It began as an Episcopal chapel and then spent decades in the 20th century home to a Jewish synagogue. It is on the National Register of Historic Places.
But the building has had a different personality since 1973 when it was accepted on the Auraria Campus, the urban renewal project that created space for three educational facilities, the University of Colorado Denver, Metropolitan State University of Denver and Community College. of Denver.
The Romanesque-style building still looks like a church from the outside, but the interior was converted years ago into a white-cube style art gallery where exhibitions moved it far from its original purpose. One recent artist showed works with their own body hair, another showed a series of photos of his neighbors that he took from behind his blindfolds without them knowing- all interesting- wiling material, sure, even apart from the usual things you’ll find in a working church.
But Bumiller’s exhibition is changing for Emmanuel, and in a very good way. He respects its past, allowing his paintings to harmonize with the architecture rather than trying to erase it.
Emmanuel’s back-in-the-day remodel included placing a series of small, round windows along the upper part of its high walls, and Bumiller produced a series of site-specific paintings. exact size of windows. They alternately hang-a round painting between each round window on all four sides of the gallery-so you can get the actual nature scenes seen through the windows, spoken by the imagined Bumiller’s scenes of the same subject, albeit with exaggerated colors and shapes.
It’s a fluid mix that reminds visitors how nature and art can truly complement each other.
Bumiller’s larger paintings, 4 or 5 feet square, have their own personality and varying degrees of abstraction. Most of them are presented by the artist as diptych, painted on wood panels connected to a work but remaining distinct.
The two part “Chokecherry” is an example. The top part shows the familiar plant with reddish branches in front of a light blue background that resembles the sky. The lower half is the same plant but placed in front of a darker blue background that resembles water.
The exhibit’s largest work, “Two Trees,” is actually displayed in five panels, each hanging vertically. Again, the foreground of the photo remains consistent but the background changes from green to purple to yellow. Viewers can do what they want from these clear color changes, but they serve to bring out different visual aspects of the trees, perhaps as the sunlight changes throughout the day or because changing weather can change the way we experience.
Bumiller is touching on spiritual ideas here; clearly there are biblical references in the title of the exhibition, and the two trees in five parts are meant to represent the Tree of Life and the Tree of Knowledge in the Garden of Eden. By emphasizing the building’s past as a church rather than a gallery, he shifts his work to the realm of religion-so a believer in divine powers may legitimately be tempted to pray in this exhibition, or , in some cases, to pick its fruits.
And the Emmanuel Gallery feels sacred in this incarnation, even if not necessarily in an evangelical sense. Holiness is more reflective of the way we can adore nature, or serenity, or the organic comfort of any quiet, meditative space.
In that way, the “Garden of Eden” serves its own kind of higher purpose. It is an oasis, a place to go and relax in the summer when many people feel stress. It has the aura of a garden, but has air conditioning. There if you need to.
IF YOU GO:
The “Garden of Eden” runs through Aug. 5 at Emmanuel Gallery, Larimer and 10th street on the Auraria Campus in downtown Denver. It’s FREE. Information at 303-315-7431 or emmanuelgallery.org.
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