Overgrown I

This piece explores the relationship between environments created by man and those that exist in the natural world. It contemplates juxtapositions between the urban and the pastoral, the structured and the chaotic, the spaces where man and nature coexist and collide, and the ways in which they influence one another. Using grid stencils, Mathers-Suter superimposes renderings of man-made spaces on natural settings creating hybrids that evoke both the polarization and unity of our two worlds. The tonal inversion of the natural and man-made images draws from photography to challenge traditional perception of the natural environment as backdrop to the man-made. Mathers-Suter captures the natural environment in the positive image while using negative space to represent the artificial or man-made environment; a quiet irony given the precision of the spatial voids themselves. Organic and the inorganic meet and form a single new impression of inhabited space that combines elements, which are seemingly at odds with one another.