Natura Non Constristatur
Cover Image: Whitney Bedford, Veduta (Vuillard First Fruits at Sunset), 2025
Natura Non Constristatur September 19 - November 15, 2025 Co-curated by Jacqueline Surdell
Whitney Bedford Jeff Carter Mitchell Charbonneau Rick Leong Morgan Mandalay Kiki Smith William Staples Ena Swansea Amy Vogel Salon installation by
Andee Hess
Introduction by Britton Bertran Photography by Nathan Keay
Introduction by Britton Bertrán
On reverse: Rick Leong, Divergence and Convergence, 2025
Natura Non Constristatur
SECRIST | BEACH is pleased to present the salon invitational exhibition Natura Non Constristatur. Natura Non Constristatur brings together a group of artists that formally and conceptually explore the cultural potency of nature - specifically trees and forests - in relation to humanity. The exhibition includes an intergenerational roster of artists and was curated with the assistance of gallery artist Jaqueline Surdell. Natura Non Constristatur is presented concurrently with Surdell's solo exhibition The Conversion: Rings, Rupture, and the Forest Archive as well as a site specific installation, titled Lumen Reliquary, created by Andee Hess of Osmose Design. Natura Non Constristatur is a Latin phrase meaning “Nature Is Not Saddened.” It expresses the idea that the natural world is indifferent to human suffering and misfortune. This phrase is often associated with a philosophical outlook that emphasizes the insignificance of human affairs in the grand scheme of the universe. It invites reflection on whether nature truly coexists with us - or merely endures us. As such, the relationship between humans and nature is complex and, as some would hope, deeply interconnected. We like to imagine a symbiotic bond - one of mutual support and harmony. But in this Age of Anthropocene, reality teaches us otherwise. The artists in Natura Non Constristatur employ a range of approaches and materials within this dynamic that explores the profundity of our relationship to forests. Throughout recorded human existence, these woodland areas have projected a wide range of cultural and emotional feelings stirring awe and reverence while conjuring everything from mystery and divinity, to fear and comfort. Alongside these compulsions, one might also see elements akin to the spiritual realm, organized or otherwise. This intersection of nature and spirituality compounded by the notion of nature’s lack of empathy creates a curious predicament ripe for exploring.
Kiki Smith Kiki Smith has spent a career exploring the body as a source of knowledge and self-conception, from its microscopic organic makeup to the resulting consciousness, informed by myth, folklore, and personal references. Balancing abjection with spirituality across diverse mediums, her unique approach to figuration expresses a reverence for the natural world beyond simple representation. Alongside the paintings, drawings, photography, and sculpture on view in Natura Non Constristatur, Smith’s oeuvre perhaps best encapsulates the provocative suggestion at the core of the latin phrase: that nature may not care about us, but we care about it, and in many ways, cannot imagine ourselves without it. The artist’s Sorcery series, etchings of nine cross-sections of tree trunks, generates a tonal image of both horror and beauty—one that is visceral. Smith seems to supplant the trunk of a tree for the human spirit, an inquiry into our own reaction to violence upon a body. Summer I sees the artist illustrating a black-andwhite image, drawing in waterfalls cascading down rocks in stark lines. The result is hypnotic—perhaps the opposite to the Sorcery prints.
Sorcery (1st Hour), 2019 Intaglio in 2 colors on Hahnemühle mould-made white 27.5 x 35 inches, paper 30.25 x 38 inches, framed Edition of 9 of 13
Sorcery (2nd Hour), 2019 Intaglio in 2 colors on Hahnemühle mould-made white 27.5 x 35 inches, paper 30.25 x 38 inches, framed Edition of 9 of 13
Sorcery (4th Hour), 2019 Intaglio in 2 colors on Hahnemühle mould-made white 27.5 x 35 inches, paper 30.25 x 38 inches, framed Edition of 9 of 13
Sorcery (4th Hour), 2019 Intaglio in 2 colors on Hahnemühle mould-made white 27.5 x 35 inches, paper 30.25 x 38 inches, framed Edition of 9 of 13
Sorcery (4th Hour), 2019 Intaglio in 2 colors on Hahnemühle mould-made white 27.5 x 35 inches, paper 30.25 x 38 inches, framed Edition of 9 of 13
Sorcery (5th Hour), 2019 Intaglio in 2 colors on Hahnemühle mould-made white 27.5 x 35 inches, paper 30.25 x 38 inches, framed Edition of 9 of 13
Sorcery (7th Hour), 2019 Intaglio in 2 colors on Hahnemühle mould-made white 27.5 x 35 inches, paper 30.25 x 38 inches, framed Edition of 9 of 13
Sorcery (8th Hour), 2019 Intaglio in 2 colors on Hahnemühle mould-made white 27.5 x 35 inches, paper 30.25 x 38 inches, framed Edition of 9 of 13
Sorcery (9th Hour), 2019 Intaglio in 2 colors on Hahnemühle mould-made white 27.5 x 35 inches, paper 30.25 x 38 inches, framed Edition of 9 of 13
Summer I, 2022 Archival digital pigment print 20.375 x 24.5 inches, framed
William Staples William Staples draws on images from childhood in 1970s and 80s as well as art historical imagery, journeying to libraries and scouring the internet for the pictures, drawing and then painting them with a reductive or sentimentally codified manner, where memories fuse with legacies of cultural imagery. In his work, particularly landscapes, colors—their richness or opacity, fading or cleanliness—lines—their looseness or directionality—and space—its constriction or seemingly infinite depth—all allow the imagination to construct an image from these clues. His paintings capture motifs of nature, using symbolic allusions, invoking a nostalgia around discovering forests and wooded areas.
Tree, 2022 Oil and sawdust on canvas 32 x 17 inches
Bird, 2024 Acrylic, oil and charcoal on canvas 8 x 10 inches
Moose, 2022 Oil and sawdust on canvas 11 x 14 inches
Woods, 2023 Oil and sawdust on canvas 10 x 12 inches
Two Trees, 2022-24 Oil, bark, sawdust and string on canvas 12 x 10 inches
Three Birds, 2013-14 Oil on canvas 24 x 26 inches
Rick Leong Rick Leong’s paintings adopt a classical Chinese style with graphic, flowing renderings of vegetation among mythical creatures and plant hybrids. Paths, clearings, bodies of water, and bridges enter into a sublime world where humans, nature, animals, and spirits are equal. In the context of the Anthropocene, Leong’s tonal paintings offer an ideal symbiosis, one where the natural world flourishes and humans are welcome—with reverence, of course. With a tonal color palette, the artist expands the potential of a spectrum of hues to offer a hypnosis, one where nature calms the soul and fills space—from the edges of the canvas to the interiority of the viewer.
Divergence and Convergence, 2025 Oil on canvas 36 x 36 inches
A Closer Look, 2025 Oil on canvas 36 x 36 inches
Wild Willow, 2019 Oil on canvas 96 x 72 inches
Ena Swansea Ena Swansea paints portraits, cityscapes, and rural scenes with an ephemerality, seeing her paintings as film stills. The paintings are luminous, with light developed within a ghostly negative, alongside the effect of overexposure, or oversaturation. Her use of a graphite-infused ground welcomes a low, metallic shimmer to the surface, catching light as the viewer moves. The paintings respond to the eye’s gaze, the natural world offering healing. In into the trees, a small figure wanders beneath the magnificent trees of Central Park, along 5th Avenue, the format of the canvas offering nature the subjective position. Even more dream-like, rain people sporadically places people walking, among them a business man and a Buddhist monk moving through an angelic, heartening forest.
into the trees, 2019 Oil and acrylic on linen 86 x 40 inches
rain people, 2023 Oil and acrylic on linen 82 x 108 inches
Jeff Carter Restructuring parts of Ikea furniture and everyday consumer objects into sculptures which reimagine 20th century buildings, ideas, and the Bauhaus school ethos, Jeff Carter revisits the Modernist value of “form follows function” with “form over function.” The multimedia artist utilizes seemingly apathetic forms to sympathetic ends: to work from reference, the natural and built worlds can be reconsidered, revisited, honored, and critiqued, bridging the past and the present. As a temporal element, Tree Test 2 is modeled after a low-resolution topographical scan of a landscape that rotates one singular time within a year, similarly to how tree rings tell the age of a tree when cut down. This mechanical intervention into the space, with motion almost imperceptible to the visitor, offers a critical evaluation of Natura Non Constristatur in the current climate crisis.
Tree Test 2, 2025 Cast iron, wood, PLA and motor 6 x 6 x 5 inches, approximately (sculpture) 4.5 x 58 x 9 inches (shelf)
Amy Vogel In forming, deforming, and reforming, Amy Vogel’s conceptual artwork often mimics landscape—at the hands of cultural conceptions of nature. The drawings, paintings, sculptures, and installations, dislocated from context and landscape, recalibrate the human perception of nature as beautiful or ugly, durable or frail, temporal or atemporal. The artist has taken erasure unto her drawings of idyllic landscapes, with curious figures frolicking, oblivious, in clearings surrounded by towering trees. With her almost contradictory interventions, Vogel expresses dualities at the heart of her engagement with nature.
Picnic, 2024 Graphite on paper 30 x 45 inches (diptych) 35 x 50 x 1.5 inches, framed
Backyard, 2024 Graphite on paper 22.5 x 30 inches 27.5 x 35 x 1.5 inches, framed
The Cast, 2023 Graphite on paper 22.5 x 30 inches 27.5 x 35 x 1.5 inches, framed
Morgan Mandalay With a voracity, Morgan Mandalay paints dynamic, almost volatile, scenes of storms, volcanic eruptions, and rain, mediated by beautiful gradients of color, blooming flowers, and welcoming interiors. His paintings rely on composition to create canvases that oscillate between chaos and serenity, sometimes both at once. In these beautifully fragile moments emerge stories of fear, growth, and transformation, as if painting narrative fulcrums through cataclysmic environments. Trees take the form of jagged lighting, crossing at a igniting moment in Angel’s Trumpet (Woe! Woe! Woe!) against a backdrop with expressive brushstrokes. In Blight in Time, the artist creates pockets of serenity through curving lines, each a window into those more tame moments in Mandalay’s work.
Blight in Time, 2024 Oil on canvas in artist’s frame 36 x 28 inches
Angel's Trumpet (Woe! Woe! Woe!), 2022 Oil on canvas in artist’s frame 54 x 40 inches
Mitchell Charbonneau Mitchell Charbonneau revives the symbolic potential of common objects. Often slipping beneath perception, the reconstruction of chairs, energy drink cans, and car fresheners, among others, in novel materials invokes—in the lack of utility—their affective qualities. Taking the form of ubiquitous tree-shaped car fresheners, Charbonneau reproduces this familiar everyday object as a conceptually heavy cast bronze object. These “Little Trees,” contextualized within the larger scheme of the exhibition, take on an outsized role questioning ideas around utility, nostalgia, aura and the manipulation of natural materials.
Royal Pine, Royal Pine, Royal Pine, 2022 Painted bronze 8 x 3 inches
Black Ice, Wild Cherry, New Car Scent, 2024 Painted bronze 10 x 4.5 inches
True North, Black Ice, 2025 Painted bronze 8 x 3.5 inches
Whitney Bedford Whitney Bedford revisits historical landscape paintings made by some of art history’s most important artists such as Mondrian, Van Gogh and Vuillard. Bedford’s take on these masterworks by including her own imagining of trees and other natural formations in the forefront—and the addition of fixed geometric lines that suggest a room or horizon line. This combination of re-rendered lush, verdant and flourishing landscapes painted in the 18th and 19th centuries along with technicolor floral inventions nods to a contemporary reconsideration of the sublime that is specifically contextualized for our current Age of Anthropocene.
Veduta (Vuillard First Fruits at Sunset), 2025 Ink and oil on nylinen on panel 96 x 144 x 2 inches
Veduta (Van Gogh The Poet’s Garden), 2025 Ink and oil on nylinen on panel 43 x 54 x 2 inches
Veduta (Mondrian Landscape Silhouettes), 2024 Ink and oil on linen on panel 22 x 30 x 2 inches
The Night Ahead, 2017 Ink and oil on panel 36 x 48 x 2 inches
Synchronicity, 2016 Ink and oil on panel 18 x 24 inches
Lumen Reliquary Salon Installation by Andee Hess For her installation, Hess foraged for material in the forests near her home in the Pacific Northwest, ultimately selecting discarded walnut trunks from a sawmill in Aurora, Oregon where she worked alongside the sawyer to mill the final pieces and transport them to her studio. Weeks of sanding and sculpting ensued, as a language and pattern of interruptions in the wood evolved. Imagined as a simplified technology which is either ancient or highly advanced, alluding to interfaces from vintage sci-fi and retrofuturism, this sculpture represents a manipulated network for unknown functionality. Hovering above the sculpture are suspended mirror ribs which evoke a forest canopy and sacred enclosure, abstracting the reflection we engage and project upon experiences in nature.
We would like to thank the participating artists as well as their galleries; Ben Brown Fine Arts, Bradley Ertaskiran, Krakow Witkin, Off Paradise, Universal Limited Art Editions, and 65Grand.