Garden

Garden, dated 2020, is catalogued as a landscape and likely depicts an enclosed or cultivated outdoor space observed at a specific moment — a particular light condition, a season, or the relationship between a garden's designed elements and the natural growth that exceeds design. Brodbeck's farm upbringing and Japanese training both contribute to her sensitivity to cultivated landscapes, and this print probably works within an intimate scale rather than the broad vistas of her open-landscape works. The composition may frame a path, a single plant form, or a corner of the garden, using cropping to suggest a larger whole. Water-based pigments on washi would render foliage and ground with restrained color, relying on tonal variation rather than chromatic intensity. Bokashi gradations in the sky or background would give the garden space depth and atmosphere. As a 2020 work, it likely reflects the increased attention to near-at-hand subjects that characterized much artistic production during that period.