Alisa Synder’s gentle, lyrical oil paintings of undergrowth and ground cover beneath trees in the woods – at the Chase Gallery just through July 28 – are a seasonal, meditative encounter with the beauty and form of oft-forgotten and unseen nature – of blades of straw grass bent above wintry, blue snow; of dead brown ferns rendered like a spattering of jewels, of blazes of tiny yellow leaves in the fall.

“I look at these forms and spaces with affection and love,” Snyder says in her artist statement. “Alders, ferns, blackberry, birch, maple, spruce, the plants that surround them, their richness of colour, texture and pattern, mysterious shaded places, filtered sunlight, earthy dampness, all together alive in their nature ….”

Apart from an insight into what is often hidden or taken for granted, the exhibit is a lovely journey into Synder’s use of line. She works with a pale blue line as an outline and also to build forms.

In some ways these paintings are as much about drawing as they are about colour and paint application. It’s really interesting to see how she conjures her natural objects. The birch tree trunk in Morning Light is defined by a blue outline and just a few patches of paint; the mossy log in Midsummer Dream is more fully painted in a soft mottle of browns, greys and greens.

“In these paintings I want to express my relationship to nature around me and equally express my relationship to art,” says Snyder. “It is the intersection of nature and art, looking to both for inspiration, looking to the work of the painters I love and most often turn to: Matisse, Bonnard and Cezanne.”

She uses planes to create flowers in different tones of pink and red in Parade much as she does in her works in the series, Still Life With Planes, which are all about colour and shape and celebrating ordinary objects.

Her still life is related to “thopography” – the depiction of insignifcant odds and ends and she quotes Norman Bryson in Looking at the Overlooked: Four Essays on Still Life Painting: “Still life takes on the exploration of what ‘importance’ tramples underfoot.”

The Chase Gallery, Nova Scotia Archives, 6016 University Avenue, is open 8:30 to 4:30 Monday to Friday; 8:30 to 8 Wednesday; 10 to 3 Saturday.

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