Press Release

Images of war are the potent narrative elements in Lisa Zwerling’s new work. Zwerling was haunted by the visuals of Iraq. In a creative fiction she combines the wolves she’s painted for several years with Apache helicopters. Whereas helicopters used in Vietnam were largely for rescue, in Iraq Apaches are a new generation, fitted with bombs.

As Zwerling painted her reaction to the war, she found that her symbolic metaphor was indeed a reality. As a member of the Defenders of Wildlife and from an editorial in the New York Times, she learned that in Alaska helicopters are used in aerial gunning. Wolves are run down and either shot from the air or exhausted in the chase, then killed on the ground. Though Apaches are not used for aerial gunning of wolves, the image is close enough. It conflates the horrors of war with the ruthless extermination of animals. Zwerling shows two paintings with the same landscape, one day, one early evening. Helicopters descend like locusts into an agitated forest. “Running Wolves and Apaches” is a large oil, treated with brilliant washes of color as transparent as watercolor. Zwerling’s deliriously active brushwork reinforces the sense of panic.

Zwerling continues the theme in paintings of birds of prey. But in comparison to wolves and birds, man aided by machines tops of the list of nature’s predators.