Anne Walker
Mending Fences

“Good Fences Make Good Neighbors.”  Do good fences make good relationships?  Does mending fences, rebuilding barriers between one field and another, keep the two close?  Does a little bit of space, well-tended, keep a relationship in balance? 

Mending fences requires sweat effort.  Taking down the old, rotten wood, replacing it with sturdy, new posts, and securely nailing up oak boards take time and muscle.  Lining up the posts straight in a row requires a clear, focused mind.  Mending relationships works much the same.  Removing the barriers built between people, like fields, takes time and emotional sweat.  Is rebuilding a relationship like rebuilding a fence?  Is some separation necessary for relationships to function? 

The current work represents my experience of the landscape being reinvented.  The farm, once in a state of decay, is being reborn and mended.  The barriers between fields are repaired.  The images focus on the fresh, bright light of a late spring day or a crisp autumn afternoon.  The presence of fences links the pieces in this show.  They contain horses and other livestock.  They fail to keep out wildlife that ignore the manmade barriers and simply leap them.  They inconvenience farmers who cut the grass for hay, let it lay, and bale it for later use.  They make the landscape into a series of irregularly shaped planes of green, amber, brown, or grey-white enclosed in umber-grey and olive-green lines and curves.  Fences serve as linear elements that provide a rhythm to the viewer’s experience of the space within the canvases.  

Do, “good fences make good neighbors?”   Or “Is there something that doesn’t love a wall, that wants it down?” as Frost states.

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