Heather Bause Rubenstein: FLOURISH + FADE

In Heather Bause Rubinstein’s recent large-scale canvases, viewers are immediately confronted with a whirlwind of painterly events that are wildly varied, intricately intermingled, and alive with jittery visual energy. Gradually, from the initial chaos, the structure of the paintings emerge, revealing rhythms, spatial relationships, and a visual logic, only to dissolve again as new elements reconfigure the composition.

The impact of Bause Rubinstein’s work lies not only in her virtuosic handling of paint but in her refusal to be confined to a single genre or style. Her compositions are too spatially complex to be labeled as figure/ground and too relational to be considered allover painting. Navigating between abstraction and representation, her works are tied to nature and the tradition of landscape-inspired abstraction. However, her subject is not nature in a general sense, but rather a specific iteration of it: the garden. Her paintings are not literal depictions of gardens, but rather a re-imagining of what experiencing them feels like, capturing phases of life and the emotional charge that comes from both the experience of nature and the artist’s awareness of climate change.

Painters and gardens have long shared a deep connection. From Monet’s Giverny gardens to Bonnard’s LeCannet, and Joan Mitchell’s Vétheuil sunflowers, gardens have provided inspiration to painters as sites of color, form, and contemplation. For Bause Rubinstein, who draws from these influences, gardens embody a balance between nature and culture, offering a space for both control and surrender. Just as a painter shapes their canvas, the act of tending a garden becomes a metaphor for artistic creation itself—a quest to assert control over nature, if only temporarily, and to reflect on the beauty that emerges.