Natural EVOLUTION

THE ARTWORK OF JUDITH BELZER EXAMINES NATURAL AND SYNTHETIC LANDSCAPES.

- JOHN O'HERN

Gathering thoughts for one of the biennial Re-presenting Representation exhibitions that I curated at the Arnot Art Museum in Elmira, New York, I found paintings by Judith Belzer at a gallery on Newbury Street in Boston. Her paintings at that time were intimate examinations of the landscape that inspired the desire to develop a closer relationship with nature itself. As a New Englander I identified with her landscapes as well as with her philosophy and included one of her paintings in an exhibition in 1997.

Her world and world view were reoriented when her husband, writer Michael Pollan, was appointed to the faculty of the University of California, Berkeley. She, Michael and their son, Isaac, moved from bucolic northwest Connecticut to the hills of Berkeley, California. When I visited in 2004, Isaac happily told me his mother was painting in one of the bedrooms and, indeed, she was. Her work had changed. She had stepped back and was examining the structure of live oaks and eucalyptus and considering the fact that the beautiful eucalyptus was thought to be an invasive species and a known water guzzler while, at the same time, being a fire risk. I included the new tree paintings in an exhibition at John Pence Gallery in San Francisco in 2004 and in my final Re-presenting Representation exhibition the following year.