Still Waters Run Deep
article by Nicole Maria Evans | Curator of Art at the Paris Gibson Square in Great Falls, MT
images by Nicole Tavenner
©Nicole Tavenner
Rich and deep seasonal tones, set within the lost details of blurred landscapes, reveal scenes of sublime yet raw experiences in Dana Berardinis’s Forgotten Lands. This robust other-earthly body of work, drawn from memory and experience, was created by the artist over the period two years. The work focuses on the different types of wetland areas in Northwest Montana and their purpose in nature. The project began in a small, frigid wind-torn cabin studio in the woods, where mother nature’s fickle weather patterns predetermined the lengths of artistic dedication, and finally completed later at her backyard studio in the Flathead Lake area of Big Arm, Montana.
Berardinis was attracted to the Montana landscape early on in life and has lived most of her adult life here after graduating from the Cleveland Institute of Art. Her connection to the land is spiritual and actual, serving as a river guide initially in Tennessee and later in Glacier Park, as well as making her own wine from locally harvested mountain produce, bottled and sold at her Flathead Valley business, D. Berardinis Winery. Her artwork extends from her mindfulness and dependence on the land. Dana has always felt a deep-rooted connection to the earth and concern for its well-being, even as a child growing up in Ohio she sensed a kinship with nature and would often escape to the woody, dark enclaves of the forest.
“I was always intrigued and drawn to the swamps as a child. These mysterious areas have always stirred up my imagination. As I got older, I watched the fields and woods near my home be destroyed and taken over by building and development. This deeply affected me. I wanted to fight against what was happening around me. I used my artwork as a way of dealing with my own emotions as well as projecting the importance of preserving and protecting the landscape. I feel this is my focus and purpose as an artist.”
©Nicole Tavenner
Witnessing the unyielding reality of forest fires in Montana brought Dana to a constant emotional halt yet eventual rebirth. The recurring devastation she confronted yearly sowed, primal sublime feelings of beauty and fear into her creative process, resulting in the charred painted terrains from Passage of Renewal, 2014, an exhibition shown at The Holter Museum of Art and the Missoula Art Museum.
Dana’s most recent body of work Dana Berardinis: Forgotten Lands, exhibited at The Paris Gibson Square Museum of Art through January 16, 2020, continues to explore her environmental concerns about the place she calls home, but this time focuses on the precarious existence of Montana’s endangered wetland sanctuaries.
“When I first started my wetlands series, I was living in an old cabin on the east shore of Flathead Lake. Before I started this body of work, I had a dream one night that I was trudging through a swampy land in the late evening. That next morning, from memory of the dream, I created Fading Realm. I worked on it in my studio using charcoal and pastel. I knew this was the beginning of my new body of work. The dream left a powerful impact on me. I thought about what the wetlands meant to me and why I would create this new series.”
dana berardinis | fading realm, 2017
charcoal & pastel 28.5˝ x 36˝ x 1.5˝
Berardinis meditated on her work, spending long hours walking the Pablo Wildlife Refuge in the Mission Valley or listening to the sounds of frogs, birds, and insects chirping in the Flathead Indian Reservation with the Mission Mountains to the East. Each visit was an opportunity to harvest natural materials, draw, or paint en plein air in the swamps, sloughs, marshes, and meadows she seeks to protect. “I love seeing the marshes and the grasses merge. The more time I spent in the wetlands, the more I became aware of how important they are to the health of the landscape and how fragile these places can be.”
Still waters run deep for Berardinis. As a free spirit, owning her soulful connection to the land, she also admits to being a self-proclaimed recluse of sorts, “In a lot of ways, I isolate myself in order to create, I live and work in a place where I am alone and surrounded by this quiet beauty.” The landscapes in Forgotten Lands are forged from these solitary transformative sessions.
©Nicole Tavenner
Dark and moody moments grow out of the tar like textural suspension visible in the first drawing from her collection, Fading Realm, charcoal and pastel, 2017, but then grace reveals itself in a hopeful and illuminating moment filled with light and color as shown in Vibrant Slough, a large scale oil painting with mixed seeds and grasses on wood, from 2018. The counterbalance of gritty, intense terrains and caustic waters, with sunlit vibrant green marshes, are what make these dramatic artistic impressions relevant to today’s conversations and concerns about climate change, urban development, and endangered wetlands. Changing each time they are observed, much like the environs they reference.
At the close of the day, when the sun sets over Montana’s treasured land and waters, Dana hopes her work remains as an example of nature’s beauty, and an artist’s efforts towards wetland conservation. Not as an end record of a once existent place. “I feel it’s important for people who live in an urban environment to become more aware of how important it is to protect the delicate ecosystems of the wetlands. My hope is that galleries and museums in larger cities will be open to bringing in this body of artwork to help people in cities experience nature and why the wetlands need to be preserved in order to live in a healthy environment.”
The exhibition Dana Berardinis: Forgotten Lands is on exhibit at the Paris Gibson Square Museum of Art (The Square) in Great Falls, Montana, showing now through January 16, 2020. Dana will talk about her current work at her exhibition reception on November 8, 2019 at 5:30pm.
dana berardinis | vibrant slough, 2017
Oil, Dried Grasses, Leaves, Seed Pods on Wood. 56˝ x 56˝ x 4˝
“This painting is from the Flathead Indian Reservation with the Mission Mountains to the East. Everything here felt so vibrant and full of life. I would spend time with each changing season in order to see all the variations this scene went through. This painting was made in the early fall. I wanted to incorporate into my painting the dried grasses, the leaves from the trees and seed pods from the plant life that exists here. It was a way for me to connect deeper to the work by bringing pieces of the scene into the painting. I wanted to bring attention to this special area that some may pass by without notice.”