“Art allows us to develop a love for places and objects we may have never noticed before,” says New Orleans and Atlanta artist Deedra Ludwig about the motivation for her widely recognized nature-based paintings. Taking elements of landscape - the flora of wild places - Ludwig weaves together images that allow viewers to create their own narratives and meditations on nature.

Ludwig aims to create “the essence of a landscape” using oil pigments, ink, and nontraditional materials, which include soil and “ground botanical specimens.” These, the artist says, “serve as a foundation for the sense of place that is layered into each painting.”

Suffused in radiant color, her paintings both intrigue and inspire in their almost kaleidoscopic imagery. They represent decades-long experimentation with color, mark-making, composition, and intuition. She works simultaneously on multiple paintings. “One piece leads to the next, each telling a chapter of a larger story,” she says. The resulting body of work presents a multifaceted picture of the landscape that inspires her.

Ludwig considers her work fundamentally environmental. In the last decade, she has worked with botanists, biologists, and historians on site in diverse ecosystems “where human interaction has diminished the vital well-being of land and watersheds.” Although Ludwig is highly established in Atlanta, this exhibition is her first at Thomas Deans Fine Art.