Trine Bumiller. Interference

About

Trine Bumiller continues her investigations of landscape and memory with her latest body of work. Her paintings combine imagery of the organic world and of human construction, both as she observes them and through the altering lens of memory. Abstraction and hints of representation engage with one another in the field, paralleling the tension of the perceived and the imagined.

Bumiller captures that dynamic relationship between forces in her paintings in both her imagery and her process.  As she builds up her pieces, images are embedded in layers of oil and varnish like insects in amber. Transparency and opacity both reveal and conceal, much like memory itself. The intuitive evolution of Bumiller’s layering and the resulting organic environment is disrupted by what appear to be intervening man-made structures, just how the natural world is constantly veering on becoming lost to memory as human imposition overwhelms it.

It is this vulnerability of the landscape that drives Bumiller most. “Landscape is ingrained in us,” she says. “We are a part of it as much as it is a part of us. The landscape of our ancestors informs the conscious and unconscious ways in which we live our present lives. Memory is how we react with our environment, how we preserve our existence in the world.” Her work is a way, in part, to honor that role.