Matisse Landscape Pot

This painting, by the Los Angeles-based artist Jonas Wood, belongs to a series of so-called “landscape pots” in which houseplants appear rooted not in ceramic vessels but instead in pot-shaped landscapes—in this case, a philodendron-type plant sits atop a view borrowed from Henri Matisse’s 1912 depiction of agapanthus in the garden of the Villa Brooks, Tangiers. This series brings two traditional genres of art, still life and landscape, into unexpected dialogue, transforming the humble pot into a riff on the traditional idea of painting-as-window. The layered, montage quality and graphic color that characterizes Wood’s work results from his practice of drawing and painting from photo-collages made up of his snapshots and found images. He also often quotes from his own previous compositions and from the works of other artists who have influenced him, including Matisse and Picasso. Wood refers to the plants as “clippings,” a word that links his practice of collage and reuse to the capacity of certain species of plants to regenerate from clipped stems.