Drifts

A series made from driftwood sourced from Vermont and Block Island, an island 13 miles off the coast of Rhode Island where Langlands lives seasonally. Much of the wood drifts from forested regions like Northern Vermont, where she spends most of the year. On Block Island, with its few trees—many introduced by humans—the arrival of driftwood feels like a dialogue between landscapes. In Vermont, that dialogue extends to humans and animals: neighbors protect prized maples with metal guards to deter beavers, who, ironically, have no interest in dead wood or trees already fallen.

Each piece of driftwood was once a living tree. After drying and treating it, Langlands brings it into the studio to revitalize, transforming it through paint and color into something more vital than dead, more tree than wood. The resulting works act as impermanent monuments, sculptures, self-portraits, and landscape painting—visual quips that embrace humor as much as resonance. They invite deeper, preverbal connections between the earthly, natural, and wild, while challenging conventions of painting in their exhibition form.