The American Experience

Homage to the Hudson River Painters

Students flip the works of America's most influential landscape painters on their head while retaining the spirit of their venture

Inspired by the same spirit and reverence for nature as the Transcendentalists, the Hudson River Painters sought to depict massive landscapes and to study the interplay of light and nature in their attempts to capture the sublime. 

Working with our Artist in Residence, Celeste Neuhaus, during a trip to Phipps Conservatory, students flipped the works of the Hudson River Painters and attempted, through photography, to capture very close up images of artificial light upon cultivated nature.  By capturing small instead of large, artificial instead of natural, and cultivated instead of wild, our students sought to capture the sublime through a modern interpretation of the Hudson River Painter's works.  The works of our students are a commentary upon the taming of the American landscape, the contrived enhancement of the natural, and the up close, intimate connection people in our society have with the objects that populate our lives.  The students produce this commentary without rejecting the potential for a transcendent experience with our natural world.