Forest Woodward

Image © Forest Woodward

Artist Statement

What Roots May Clutch is an exploration of human and non-human relations in the shifting landscapes of the American West. Working primarily in the "edgelands" - places in heightened states of flux due to human presence - the work traces a meandering path through fire-scars, exhausted extraction sites, and drought affected watersheds. While the work began, and in some way remains, a critique of the Western colonial experiment - and pursuant attitudes of dominion - it has also shifted under my thumb as I have tried to name, categorize or otherwise articulate it's meaning using modern language and frameworks for meaning. At it's core, the work is both a contemporary survey of the West, and an invitation to decenter modern anthropocentric narratives and ways of seeing in order to give space for new myths, new relationships, new questions and new possibilities in the ways that we relate to the world of which we are, but is not us.

Forest Woodward | Missoula, MT