Karen Kitchel

In these twenty, one-foot square panels, Karen Kitchel directs our focus to the American grasslands—natural, imported, and cultivated grasses—which often go unnoticed and underappreciated. She works from photographs and actual specimens to create realistic images, applying hundreds of layers of paint on a smooth wood surface so to render each blade of grass in exquisite detail. In doing so, she explores small-scale and subtle perceptual differences in the natural environment through meticulous attention to detail and an obsessive search for the essence of American nature.

Kitchel worked on this series she was living in Denver, Colorado; this work was created in reaction to ecological and preservation efforts in the area. By presenting her imagery in a grid pattern, Kitchel also references the Jeffersonian organizational system that was developed in the late 1700s as a way of surveying and settling new territories. Over the next hundred and fifty years, settlers in America’s prairie introduced foreign species and extensive crop cultivation resulting in the near-total devastation of the Great Plains. Conservation efforts to restore the Great Plains—once North America’s largest eco-system—are now underway.

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