Statements
Artist Statement
My work is based most recently in the Everglades but also in the garden I helped create as a wildlife habitat. I am interested in the similarities between weeds and human populations; their joint migrations, refugees who, like weeds, are welcome in some spots but chased out of others.
During the Covid pandemic, I took long walks through the Everglades, foraging for images. Focusing on outer reflections, led to inner reflection and deepened my connection to environment. I became immersed in the reflections on water and the organic structures within nature
Photography allows me to re-examine these images later in the studio, and I find unexpected layers within the reflections on the garden ponds and wild water surfaces. Below the clouds’ random patterns, I see unexplained but magnetizing life and decay revealed in organic harmony-raw red rotting leaves, microscopic specks of mysterious life, slime-coated aquatic plant life.
Using precious metal leaf to gild these images allows me to utilize a more conventionally valued material such as silver or gold to elevate the status of each image and change a simple photograph into a unique object with a solid presence. I push the method of oxidization to its limits to produce unique surfaces, both beautiful and destroyed to reflect the alchemy of nature.
Scenes from the Kitchen
I’ve always felt a strong connection to kitchen scenes, especially still life paintings of humble domestic objects by artists such as Juan Sanchez Cotan and Georgio Morandi. I could relate to a painting of a cabbage hanging from a string more than any grand scale and dramatic action-packed work.
When I started my degree in sculpture, I made ceramics reliefs and painted watercolors of the objects in the kitchen. I carved still lifes: pears and bottles from stone and orange peels from wood. When my children were little, I started taking pictures in my kitchen at the time of day when the late afternoon sun would suddenly illuminate the countertop like a stage set. Eager to capture the fleeting effect, I moved the fruit bowl into the light.
My current series features a few treasured fruit bowls, finds from flea markets and a mundane blue plastic strainer I initially resented my husband for buying it but became so useful it kept getting in on the act. I am interested in the quality of ordinary, humble objects and foods; I use gold leaf to elevate the mundane and accentuate their rich colors. The compositions are purposefully spontaneous to take advantage of the momentary light. They capture stillness out of a chaotic scene.
Soil Stories
Why should artists pay attention to microbes? As the planet's first life forms, microbes perform most biological functions, produce oxygen, drive major transitions in life, and are essential to both planetary maintenance and human health.
Born in Wiltshire, England, and raised in the Welsh countryside, artist Deryn Cowdy recalls that 'there was nothing to do, really.' She spent her time outdoors, observing plants and trees, sometimes lying on her belly to get a closer look. Nature has always been central to her practice, which spans sculpture (she holds a BA in Sculpture from the Bath Academy of Art), set design, mural painting, and photography. It was through photography that the seeds of her current work were first planted.
From Gilded Gardens to Rain, to Trees, and most recently Everglades, her work brings to light and elevates the often invisible, hidden, or out-of-reach elements of nature. The gilded still photographs of reflections captured during long walks in the Everglades allowed her to examine nature closely, revealing the intricate beauty of these fleeting moments contained within the movement.
Energized by her peers and new surroundings, and building on that trajectory, Cowdy now completes a cycle by crowning the rhythm of nature with a close examination of soil. A collage of repurposed burlap bags, natural wool, branches and plants hangs high on a wall. Now, standing upright, we can see some of what she observed while lying on her belly!
In the hallway, a reverential canopy of time-worn fallen branches, their beauty enhanced, seem to shelter the ideas and intentions gathered there and offer a space to look within. Smaller pieces hanging on the wall present imagined elements as though soil were viewed under a microscope. Soil paintings, an experiment that explores the spontaneous use of soil in recognizable art form, and a compost installation created in collaboration with Fertile Earth and Dr. Lanette Sobel, highlights the process of fertilization, illustrating the intersection of art, nature, and ecological renewal.
Cowdy reminds us of the alchemy of nature, where uprooted plants are buried only to burst forth again with new life. This intricate cycle serves as a timely reminder of our evolutionary relationship and interdependence with the natural world—and that the future is collective.
Japanese farmer and philosopher Masanobu Fukuoka (1913-2008), celebrated for his natural farming, recognized that separating nature from humanity is as harmful to us as it is to the planet. He argued that "the only work for people to do... is to gather the seeds and microorganisms nature needs and sow them."
By looking closely at nature, as Cowdy has, we come to understand that every species is a masterpiece.
Carmen F. de Terenzio