Austin Treaty Oak Glow Collage

Artists have long aspired to describe landscape and to translate the experience of a place through their art. Jill Lear is no exception to this desire. She begins with the assumption that a place is learned and known by looking. Through the systematic retelling of what she has witnessed, Lear is able to share not only the geometry and geography of place but also a passion for the act of looking. While Lear makes paintings of trees, her influences—from her formalist training to poetry, mathematics and architecture—leak out into her work, lending it a complexity that requires time to fully appreciate. Her paintings are neither embedded in realism nor are they committed abstractions. Defining herself as a painter, she makes works that are more drawing and collage in their makeup. She is committed to her subject matter—particular trees in specific locations—and yet the images are more considerations of space, form and line than the trees’ specific details. It is precisely this complexity and ambiguity that makes the pieces so compelling. Spontaneity within structure is written in pencil on a structural beam in Lear’s studio. Other notes and drawings, palettes of color and scraps of paper are tacked up in the studio, but this note stands out as both a summary of and guiding principle for Lear’s art. The duality contained within the statement is at the heart of the work and her success. Lear is simultaneously intensely formal in her approach to art making and intuitive in her execution. Before she begins to make a mark, she is secure in her approach and her knowledge of the subject matter. The grid-like mapping system she uses to translate her subject onto the plane of the paper is familiar and practiced; she is able to let the process unfold, building structure through lines and then placing bits of color and scraps of paper to accentuate an element of form or indicate perspective. The discipline Lear has cultivated has resulted in works that fundamentally all begin at the same place. She defines her process as one of mapping. The systematic approach, which involves separating the picture into parts and then laying down key points of directional line, underscores Lear’s interest in telling her experience of place truthfully, even objectively. The rich charcoal lines and graphite marks serve not only as outlines of form but as a map delineating the tracks of trunks and branches and serving as descriptors of volume.