Jean Burdick

Jean Burdick Trail Musings
Being surrounded by nature has always been a source of interpretation for me, I am concerned about the impact and consequences of climate change. From remembered landscapes, I draw on my landscape photographs recording light, shadow and memory.
While hiking in county and state regional parks these past 2 years, I have photographed individual elements of the wooded, rural landscape. On trails where I walked, I internalized my personal thoughts and experiences. I have many memories of the eastern Pennsylvania landscape from having grown up there. My work transforms feelings and memories into something tangible, focusing on segments of vistas that reflect what I experienced.
In the studio process, beginning with printing my photo silkscreens, I build each successive layer of pattern, texture and color. I enhance the image by drawing, painting, printing and experimental mark-making. Merging the images from several perspectives gives a closer interpretation of my experiences. Memories of thoughts from particular locations evoke impressions accumulated in the layered images. Each layer magnifies, overlaps, obscures or otherwise enhances the layers that came before.
Reimagining what I have observed, I reference the natural world with its organic structures. The resulting images suggest narratives of unfolding life cycles: birth, growth, death and renewal. These vistas are composites of landscapes producing a memoir of places in transition.