This Month's Featured Artist:
Gillian Bedford
BFA, Tyler School of Art
In my first winter here, I found inspiration working in my studio from Eliot Porter’s Appalachian photographs featuring yellow and white trillium. Seen in this new light and terrain, the plant has introduced a new palette and sense of movement into my work. Even so, at times the trillium in my paintings echoes the form of a water lily or carries the memory of crocuses from my childhood home in Northeast Philadelphia.
Though I have felt uprooted at various
times throughout my moves across the
country, it has been the natural world
that continually welcomes me into new
places. Trillium—with its three-petaled
blooms emerging in early spring—is
often associated with balance, harmony,
and the interconnectedness of all life.
Through this work, I have come to
recognize joy, pain, and blessing as
inseparable parts of living.
These paintings are a reminder to hold the past, present, and future with grace—to allow for the fluid shifts of life’s seasons and, like trillium, to find the fortitude to remain present.
Though Appalachia and Minnesota are very different environments, it is the trillium found in both places that makes this landscape feel like home.