The Nature Pages

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~at OUTRIDER

	Magnetic North The Landscapes Of Tom Uttech by Margaret Andera University of Wisconsin Press, 2004.
	Wisconsin artist Tom Uttech, a reclusive landscape painter of some repute, was celebrated in a retrospective exhibit at the Milwaukee Art Museum in 2004 surveying more than 30 years of his work. This handsome companion volume to that exhibit reproduces 30 representative paintings and 15 black-and-white photographs reflecting the artist's close ties to nature.		Behind every one of Uttech's haunting and clearly contemporary images lies a hard-fought battle to be true to nature, to be as real as possible, and then to trasncend reality, to reach another plane that communicates his feelings for the great mysteries of the northern wilderness, mysteries that remain unspoken but can be painted. His is an extreme case of self-identification with place." . Lucy R. Lippard
	Uttech's artwork, inspired by the north woods of the upper Midwest, is favorably critiqued in an essay by Lucy Lippard that opens the text. Margaret Andera, curator of the exhibit, contributes a question-and-answer interview with the artist -- "Landscape through the Lens" -- about his photography. The paintings, which follow a catalogue of the exhibition, make up two-thirds of the volume.
Search our selection channels between tof new, used and out-of-print books.	"Tom Uttech's turf is the northern forest, its scrubby natural grandeur and spiritual power," Lippard explains. "There in the woods and wetlands he learned to be alone, to deal with blackflies and thunderstorms, to 'walk like a hunter' and to feel his way confidently through the woods in the dark, every sense quivering -- a methaphor for finding his way through art by immersing himself in nature."		Uttech traces his interest in art to an early childhood memory of a yellow-tipped, red-winged blackbird flying before a green hayfield. This striking image "really hit home, [setting] in place an absolute devotion to beautiful things and to nature and birds -- two parts of my life that I can never remember not being obsessed with."
	Working as a landscape painter, Uttech may never receive the international recognition afforded other artists of his generation, but exhibitions like the one in Milwaukee and this companion text will certainly advance his reputation and elevate the profile of "nature artists" in general.