Depicting the passage of time and light through the color of a repeated landscape, Whitney Bedford’s “Vedute” immerses viewers in a stunning but haunting forested world.

The landscape in each large-scale work depicts the same scene mid-morning, mid-afternoon, and evening. The palette changes in each iteration but the still beauty of the environment remains unchanged. Despite that beauty, Bedford conjures a sense of the ominous—a spiritual lamenting even within her hot corals, steaming pinks, and periwinkle blues.

Tree branches curve and droop, colors edge on the surreal. The light on a body of water behind the forest is cast in lustrous but unnatural shades, creating a hallucinatory dichotomy for the viewer to unravel. Are we seeing a vivid, patterned, fecund landscape or a nightmare of ecological change?

Veduta (Bonnard Mediterranean Afternoon) Triptych offers three 114 x 60 panels featuring a drooping tree in dark royal blue on the right, and a lacey weeping willow in pale blue to the left in the foreground. The dominant shades in the forest behind these trees are white and brown, the body of water in the far background a shocking turquoise blue.

Whiteney Bedford, “Vedute” installation view, 2022. Courtesy of the artist and Vielmetter Los Angeles.

Bedford’s morning triptych in the same dimensions reveals a drooping tree in pink, the weeping willow a hot pink; background trees an olive green and a white swirl, distant water an eerie yet transcendent green.

The midnight triptych presents this scene with a haunting blue glow in the background forest, a ghostly opaque white body of water, and in the foreground, an orange willow with a beige drooping tree. 

Along with these large landscapes, there are smaller works to savor. Veduta (Lacombe Red Pines), an ink and oil work on linen and panel, reveals pines like towering blossoms, the sky lush gold. Veduta (de Staël The Route) is a feast of pink and magenta blazing from a dark navy landscape boxed within lines of chromakey blue. (Both works 2022).

In each work, Bedford creates a masterful sense of beauty intertwined with loss, the Edenic shifting to the apocalyptic as we watch days pass in impotent awe.

Whitney Bedford: Vedute
Vielmetter Los Angeles
On view through February 25, 2023