Back to ExhibitionsIn 2018, artist Tricia Wright purchased a small cottage in Ireland—her mother’s native country—and began immersing herself in the landscape. Wright draws inspiration from poet Seamus Heaney’s meditations on Irish peat bogs—wetlands whose deep layers have preserved everything from Neolithic tools and hoards of gold to preserved butter and mummified “bog bodies.” History’s layers run profoundly deep in this small country, and the earth is a museum. Meanwhile, Wright slows down when she lives in the cottage and connects directly with her surroundings.
The Naturalist speaks softly and elegantly to the artist’s spiritual bond with the natural world. It conveys the idea of time, quieting the mind, close looking, and the patience of small creatures and natural processes.
Back at Dieu Donné's Brooklyn Navy Yard studio, Wright has been working intensively with Master Collaborators—experts at hand papermaking—to explore her themes. The exhibition presents a selection of these unique objects made from cotton and abaca paper, peat, turf, moss, fungi, lichen, and gold leaf.
AMFA has acquired the newest work by Wright, The Naturalist, a large diptych created for this exhibition.
Tricia Wright (Rickmansworth, England, 1962 - ), We Have No Prairies from Bogland Variations, 2024, crushed peat turf, moss, fungi, and steel on handmade cotton and abaca paper, 14 x 22 in., Courtesy of the artist and Dieu Donné, New York. Photo by Jeffrey Sturges. Artwork created in collaboration with Dieu Donné, New York.
About Tricia Wright
Originally from England and educated in London, Tricia Wright moved permanently to the US in 1999. She operates a full-time art studio in North Stamford, CT, and maintains close connections with Europe.
Her works are held in museum, corporate, government, and private collections in the US, UK, Europe, and Africa. Recent achievements include her 2019 MTA Arts & Design Public Art Commission, a permanent large-scale installation in glass and metal at Crestwood Railway Station, New York.
In 2019, she was a Workspace Artist in Residence at Dieu Donné, Brooklyn, at Vermont Studio Center in 2020, and she was a 2017 Pollock/Krasner/Arts Mid-Hudson grantee.
About Dieu Donné
Founded in 1976, Dieu Donné is the leading nonprofit cultural institution dedicated to the use of hand papermaking processes in contemporary art. Through extensive collaborations with Master Papermakers, Dieu Donné introduces emerging and established artists from a wide variety of practices to the creative possibilities in hand papermaking – fostering experimentation and creating innovative works of art.
Tricia Wright: The Naturalist is presented by the Alan DuBois Fund for Contemporary Craft.