Serigraph

Tree of Life Edition of 100 (15 left) 30 X 42 $1,900 Description: Print is hand produced in 26 colors on Reeves Rag paper. Also available, 4 Roman number impressions and 5 artist impressions. Contact us for purchase.

Diana Bryer is an artist who believes in the forces of life, the dreams of innocence, the spiritual foundation of existence, and the politics of balance conceived and legislated in the heart. In this age of the arms race, the destruction of the rain forests, it is remarkable that an artist exists who has hope in the restoration of the earth to its Edenic beauty of lore.

Bryer's "The Tree of Life" is a subject of antiquity recreated for our "new age." In prehistoric times, world populations celebrated the harmony and balance of nature in art by dancing, engaging in religious rituals, and song. Their reverence for living was vitalistic - every symbolic image or act was believed to be reality itself.

As early human experience became more rational, the pageantry of belief became increasingly abstract. Nature, the Healer, Nature the Mother, became Nature the Obstacle, Nature the Opponent. Humanity remained captivated by its beauty and power, but the mental distancing created fear. Fear of nature prompted the desire of conquest.

Diana Bryer's art reverses this historic tendency. She begins her vision of life with myth, and myth is a collective dream. Within "The Tree of Life", her two children resting beneath the protective boughs of the central tree are dreaming of nature's wonders and in doing so draw to their abode the creatures of the world.

The animals seeking shelter in this tranquil paradise are endangered species. Bryer places on her monochromatic Spanish tinsmith borders those species most threatened by extinction. The animals are depicted with a minimum of color to symbolize their impending death if humanity doesn't courageously act on their behalf. The vividly rendered animals resting near the children are also threatened in part by humanity's tendency to take for granted those species closest to the heart. The mythical unicorn depicted in the painting serves as a bridge; it unites symbolically the vanishing animal of legend - the heroic champion of beauty, magic, truth - with the vanishing animal of reality, as familiar as our neighborhood cat and dog.

The Garden of Eden story in Genesis is a springboard for "The Tree of Life". The apple tree is the unifying element in the landscape embracing earth and sky in its loving arms and comforting the earth's creatures. Yet in Bryer's vision, this tree is not, in the Old Testament sense, a source of sin. The tree is a mother, a compassionate woman with the discerning powers of the owl peering out of her vaginal inner space.

To Bryer, the child is but the mother of the creative soul. Children's dreams become and all-encompassing reality. Their embracing love of the curious, the new, the unknown can spawn and unbiased relationship with all life forms, be they inanimate or animate, physical or spiritual. Her paintings summon adults to re-examine their "adultness", to welcome the banished prodigal child back into the heart.

This explains Bryer's use of perspective and symbolic placement of painted objects. She uses emotional geometry to influence our compassion for the children and animals. The artist has chosen the point of view of an imaginary spectator standing on the other side of the river, to the left of the apple tree. She evokes a mood of longing, what the Renaissance artists termed "desio". Her depicted images draw us to the center, encouraging us to ford the stream and lie under the sacred tree.

"The Tree of Life" is a vision of hope; it is an urgent plea for human sanity and compassion. And it joyously embraces our collective imaginations, allowing beauty and moral responsibility to partner in our quest for a peaceful world.

Bruce Kaiper, 1990.