Williams Gallery West is pleased to announce an exceptional body of work by California painter Trude McDermott.  “Recycled” features a series of paintings and prints inspired by the forms, patterns, and colors found in a paper recycling yard.

"Several years ago, I found myself interested in the changing nature of landscape increasingly transformed by the industrialized world we now inhabit.  I photographed recycling paper yards, intrigued by the bundles of paper products, which presented their own formal beauty. The paintings and prints are interpretations of the chaos of randomly bundled paper, which became for me studies in light, form and color, speaking to the ongoing transformative process of all things." 

"My interest in imagery and subject matter is not confined to a particular theme, but is dictated by my visceral response to what crosses my visual field.  This response becomes the starting point of the creative process of giving form to an idea in whatever medium seems to best express the idea; i.e. paint, photo emulsion, printing process, etc.  My preoccupation for the last couple of years has been with how the landscape is changing in relationship to human development and industrialization.  I am always seeking new ways to expand and express the flux of modern reality as I perceive it. "

Trude McDermott 2003

About the Artist

Born and raised in Bucks County Pennsylvania, artist Trude McDermott moved to the West Coast in 1958.  Having lived in California for 45 years, she considers herself as an “almost native”.   Mcdermott's interest in art began at an early age and was a constant, but intermittent, driving force in her life. Working and raising a family took precedence in her life until the 1970’s when she returned to school for deeper immersion into the arts.  At this time, modernist practices of art were being heavily questioned by the movements of conceptualism, pop art, feminist, and performance art.  Opposition to the modernist taboos against narrative, representation, and historical allusion became in the 1970’s a new framework for art practice.  The use of photographic elements as a means of painterly expression was freely used by many artists at this time.  Influenced by these trends, the camera has become the compositional tool of choice for structuring her work, allowing her to record what she sees, and then return to the studio to integrate the images she captures into her painting and mixed media prints.