Since the dawn of man civilizations have felt the need to memorialize the images of the natural world with cave drawings the primogenitor to the fine art of landscape painting. Regardless of the medium, our planet’s environments have served as a source of awe inspiring creativity for its denizens. The mid 19th century art movement known as the Hudson River School, portrayed the majesty of the landscape by its realistic, detailed, and idealized depiction of nature.1 To them nature equaled God, and thus their canvases, in almost reverential tones, respectfully enshrined all that they observed. Often man was depicted as he was, miniscule beside the vastness of creation.2 But as early as the mid 1800s these artistic residents of America’s Northeast were aware of man’s destructive tendencies towards the land. Their artwork served as an impetus to settle the West, moving the population into pristine, untouched reserves.

As today’s global conditions continue to threaten our world and as our national policies reward a profit mentality over a social consciousness, the natural wonders of our life seem even more imperiled. Membership in proactive environmental organizations is one way of taking a stand against these encroachments of technology. The approach chosen by painter Linda Guenste to make a statement about the adverse changes she witnesses is to record the natural world as she sees it during her forays around the globe. Through her art, she memorializes how it is and how she wishes it would remain.

As one who eschews a tourist mentality and sites when she travels, Guenste prefers to be alone and seeks out locales not visited by the average vacationer. She says she purposefully chooses months when less of the population is on holiday. Guenste, saying, “I see myself as a traveler and not a tourist”, immerses herself in whatever culture and nature the area provides. Her credo could satisfy both the artist and the environmentalist. “Tourists take; I observe,” she says. Her trips are always a Busman’s holiday, traveling with the idea that she will be creating artwork. She states she can’t travel enough because “the environment is a dying breed; it is us against time.

Guenste feels her connection to the environment is genetic. From her earliest recollections of growing up in rural New York State and New Jersey she was always outdoors exploring the landscape. She jokes that her impetus to become an artist was a “hereditary gift” from her best friend’s mother, herself an artist. She remembers a more cultured and creative experience awaited her whenever she visited. The amalgam of art and environment was solidified for her during those years. On a trip to Philadelphia she discovered the big city’s suburbs and their bucolic vistas. After attending Philadelphia College of Art (now University of the Arts) she received a four year certificate from the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts where she refined her talents and mastered her craft. The schools’ academic reputations drew her to the area; the landscape sealed the deal.

Although she has done figurative work, during the last 10 years she has been focused on landscape, specifically trees. Because of a visceral connectedness to the earth, she says she, “meets a tree and wants it to explain itself”. She is interested in the anatomy “not the lettuce (foliage)”; its connection to the ground is what most intrigues her. After traveling to Alaska, where she feels,” . . . is what is left of wilderness in this country”, and to Oregon, where the landscape reinforces the pristine possibilities of our country, it was a recent trip to Japan that manifested the inexorable relationship of man and nature. It produced her latest body of work entitled, “Honoring the Ancestors”. “The title was derived by my visits to ancient Shinto Shrines in Japan. In the silence that follows the ringing of a bell one honors those who have lived before. I, in turn, bestow this same honor onto the trees in my work. Each tree has a past and a present. Each tree has a story, a moment in history.” The bell ringing ritual refers to an ancient custom whereupon visitors to a shrine first wash their hands and rinse their mouths to purify themselves. A bell is then rung and the assembled people clap to honor ancestors as ones who have come before you. “I feel the same way about this artwork. The shrines, like the trees, are not to a specific individual but to the past. Today that nature is overlooked.”

While in Japan, another example she found of reverence for the past and the inextricable bond between man and nature was the practice of bracing tree branches. While in America we prune an unsymmetrical outgrowth the Japanese choose to honor the ancestors of both tree and human by supporting its waywardness. It says you are not done; life goes on. The Hudson River School artists also used the tree as a symbol. A broken tree stump, which artist Thomas Cole called a “Memento Mori”, was used in paintings to symbolize the fragility of life and its impermanence. These two views might seem diametrically opposed, with one advocating a continuation of life and the other speaking to the temporariness of it. But they are really opposite sides of the same coin.

In the past Guenste’s tree paintings were “in your face”, a straightforward composition and representation of nature. They were about the limned object and no extrapolated implications were contemplated. There was and still is no anthropocentric meaning to her work; nature was paramount, man a lucky co-inhibitor. But her work took on a more philosophical aspect with the trip to Japan. “You enter a painting and then leave when creating; the mystery is where you go once you experience the tree.” This led to thoughts about the connectedness of man to his environment, whether outside or in a simple family unit. In the observation of nature you can also understand the guiding principles of generations of families.

The eponymous piece in the show “Honoring the Ancestors” is a tribute to and an examination of the nature of the Banyan tree and a symbolic reference to the continuity of mankind. The trees can grow for centuries and as their offshoots drop and take root the tree’s dimensions expand to cover acres. The very nature of the Banyan makes Guenste think of family “from the “family of man…to the problems of a child”. The structure of the tree becomes the home, the many offshoots the generations, the parturition of the artist. Through the rendering of the Banyan, Guenste confronts the question of what it is to be a parent, a family member, a citizen and the attendant responsibilities. As a mother of teenage boys, she says, “you go from the stage of life of rearing and influencing them” (the tree grows and drops its offshoots) “and then you are rejected” (the roots taking hold of the land and beginning their own life path).

The painting “Peppi’s Affect” further demonstrates the interconnectedness of man. Peppi, an older friend, fellow artist and mentor of Guenste, hosted a birthday celebration. As a participant in the event Guenste was motivated to commemorate the occasion. Again the reification of the gathering was symbolized by a tree/root structure. While “symbolizing her family and its extensions to friends and life”, it succinctly speaks to the generations gathered around one individual.’ Its tangled roots convey how all are touched in different ways and yet are united in the commonality of humanity and propinquity. The choice of the word affect was calculated. Besides having its root in the word affection, Peppi’s affect was to touch, influence, and pass to future generations that which she possessed, “her intangible affect”.