The Forest, Environmental Series Paintings

Astri Reusch created this series of more than 200 paintings over a period starting in the 1990s until her death in 2016. The paintings are intended to immerse the viewer in imagery of the vigorous vegetation and exuberant growth of the tropical rain forest. She said that they come out of a great personal impulse to evoke an environment that expresses the strength and positive force of nature.

Although she is best known for her work in glass, metal and other more austere media and having never before in her artistic career expressed herself using coloured images or anything of this nature, she said that she approached this series as an unconscious study of something very basic and therapeutic. In her case, these works also represent a return to the world of the tropics in British Guiana (now Guyana), where she was born and spent her early childhood.

In creating these works, she said she allowed herself to be drawn to and
fascinated by the fabulous but simple beauty, the immense size and the variety of colours and shapes of this primordial life-generating planetary asset. In this series, she immersed herself in the imagery of the tropical rain forest of her youth. In her lifetime, she has observed the devastation of this resource, and her artwork reflects her awareness and concern with respect to this process.

She said of these works that they grew out of her desire to watch the images develop on the canvas as she painted in a quasi-hypnotic state – more and more, day after day, layer upon layer – until surrounded by a world of fantastic shapes and shadows, of light suffused through leaves in dazzling colours that reflect an emotional state rather than reproducing those of nature.

In 1998 she was invited by the Dance-cité troupe to provide sets for the dance performance, Bastringue/Bâtard, at the Théatre du Monument National. The giant paintings which she created for this event, some of which measure over 6.5 meters in width, act as both context and object. They create a lush tropical environment intended as a contrast to a hard-edge modern choreography set to a techno musical score, acting as both an immersive environment and a counterpoint in a dialogue with the dancers.