The aspens right outside Bridgette Meinhold’s home are her latest inspiration.

Thank you to our artist Bridgette Meinhold, for bringing us in some gorgeous new pieces! She has a lovely Substack through which she shares her latest musings and inspirations, and we asked to re-post her latest email here. Enjoy!

I needed to see if I could make some works dedicated to aspens. Living in an aspen grove, I stare at their trunks hourly, seeing them, watching me in return. Aspens are a hard tree to paint, being tall and spindly, and individual trees are often awkward. They are better viewed as a collective, and in fact they are – each tree a shoot of the same clone.

Sketches which become paintings.

But looking at the trunks as they sprout from the earth is something far more manageable and honestly, what most of us experience as we go for walks amongst them. The vegetation at their base – a tangle of bushes, grasses, and flowers, all of whom like a dappled, dreamy sort light. That’s the kind of light I like best too – dappled and dreamy.

Bridgette Meinhold’s latest sketchbook.

So I experimented first in my sketchbook in watercolor, and then tried again with cold wax, oil, and casein paint. I am still working on how to do the vegetation, but each painting gives me insights. And I guess I need you to know that about my work – it’s all just an experiment. I could lie to you and say I know what I’m doing, but do I? Maybe from the outside it appears that I do, but I don’t always, and I know now that’s ok.

I will always be the kind of artist pushing my own limits, trying out new ideas like trying on new clothes. Does this fit? Is this me? Can I pull this off? I was always one for experimenting with clothes too – as a child in middle and high school, I wore some weird outfits, just to see what it would be like.

Listening to a podcast recently, which escapes me now, someone said, fans of artists (and musicians) will always want to see the artist doing whatever it was when they first found them. I can see how that happens, and there will always be people longing to see more work like what they saw from me years ago. It’s a tricky situation, and I’ll have to keep threading that needle, but I hope to do it in a way that is authentic to me.

Cause, I’m gonna keep trying on different ideas for size. Does this painting work? Is it me? Can I pull this off?

See The New Works at Gallery MAR