Description

In the Autumn, There Was a Forest transforms the familiar landscape of an autumn forest into an abstract field of color, rhythm, and movement. Rather than reproducing the forest as it appears, Jennifer Lee fragments its colors and forms and rearranges them into elongated vertical structures. Traces of trees, reflected light, and autumn foliage remain within the composition, yet they are continuously dissolved and reconstructed until the landscape exists somewhere between recognition and abstraction. The work originates in direct observation of the intense and varied colors found in an autumn forest. These visual elements are separated from their original forms and recombined across the canvas, allowing the forest to become a space shaped by memory and imagination rather than physical geography. The repeated vertical forms create a sense of rhythm, while shifting passages of color suggest movement, reflection, and the changing experience of light. Created with oil paint and UV-reactive pigments, the painting exists in two interconnected visual states. Under ordinary light, reds, oranges, greens, blues, and pale tones form a fragmented and luminous forest. Under ultraviolet illumination, much of the visible imagery recedes into deep violet and blue while fluorescent pinks and reds emerge with heightened intensity. The transformation does not simply alter the colors of the painting. It reveals another visual structure embedded within the same surface. Through this shifting relationship between visible and ultraviolet light, In the Autumn, There Was a Forest reflects Jennifer Lee’s broader exploration of light, memory, and perception. The forest becomes more than a landscape. It becomes a stage where remembered forms can be dismantled, transformed, and reimagined, allowing multiple realities to coexist within a single painting.