A frequent visitor to Wave Hill, Isabel Bigelow came in late fall to view the trees in a “leafless” state. The juxtaposition of the centenary American elm and the youthful cultivar drew her interest. This pairing offers the opportunity to study each tree’s unique branching and structure, and to reflect on the plight of the elm. Wave Hill’s American elm (Ulmus americana) is well over one hundred years old, and it’s one of the largest elms in New York City. A disease-resistant cultivar (Ulmus americana ‘Princeton’) was planted in front of the Perkins Visitor Center in 2006. With an eye toward the landscape’s future, the horticulture staff located this elm near the site of a recently removed, diseased copper beach. Mindful of the tragic loss of so many trees to Dutch elm disease, her approach to the “survivor” tree is more dramatic and forceful. The dark color of the branches resonates against the soft ground and, with the curving form, is almost calligraphic, reflecting the twists and turns of the actual branches. In the painting to the left of the mantel, Bigelow captures the stillness and vitality of the youthful ‘Princeton’ elm and the promise for the future that it embodies. Together these two paintings tell a story of the hope of youth and the majesty of old age.

In earlier work, Bigelow’s imagery was inspired by simple curves of plowed fields and the play of light and shadow on architecture. The Wave Hill paintings continue an approach she has been following for several years. She has exhibited widely with one-person shows at Sears-Peyton Gallery, New York, NY; Gilman Contemporary, Ketcham, ID; Reynolds Gallery, Richmond, VA; Pentimenti Gallery, Philadelphia, PA; and Etsuko Shibata Gallery, Tokyo, Japan, as well as many group exhibitions. She has had residencies at Yaddo, the MacDowell Colony, the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts, the Millay Colony for the Arts, and she participated in the Artist in the Marketplace Program at the Bronx Museum of the Arts. She received a Pollock-Krasner Foundation grant. She earned her BA from Harvard University and her MFA from the Maryland Institute College of Art.

More information can be found at: www.searspeyton.com