Suzanne Keith Loechl

Family
oil on board
24 x 24 in.

Landscapes are like memories. Layers upon layers of history are recorded in one person’s psyche or one plot of land. Like people, the landscape reinvents itself. It heals when it’s wounded, but sometimes it scars for life.

Elements of the whole that are nurtured or rubbed away may remind us of who we were, or who we are, or who we wish we were. Laundry blowing in the breeze is the clothing worn by our children, or the dresses that might have been worn by the daughters we never had. What I see in the Middle West landscape are journeys of profound sadness, infinite promise, nakedness, and melancholy.

I am interested in examining our humanness through my interpretations of the Middle West landscape – seemingly plain and ordinary, devoid of mountains and water that has been pushed, pulled stripped, burned, plowed, and sprawled.

© Suzanne Keith Loechl