In this painting, Robert Richter places the viewer at the foot of a path that wraps around and beyond a small apple tree. Whereas many of his paintings use deep and richly saturated color, here he treats the subject more delicately using thin washes of oil on top of the carved wood panel. Thus, before the yellow ocher color of the landscape, the apples themselves seem to glow and emerge. Richter's use of line to suggest a recession into space comes into direct conflict with the actual two-dimensionality of the surface of the wood panel. Even more, the artist purposefully challenges the figure-ground relationship: it is not clear where the curving lines of the apple tree end and where they become the suggestion of distant landscape. Do these lines depict grassy knolls? Are their upside-down curved forms indications of a graveyard, or perhaps a highly abstract town? The ambiguity privileges faint memory over direct observation, and is part of Richter's working process.

36 x 48 inches, painting
43 x 55 inches, frame
Titled, dated, signed in pencil & stamped with initial on verso
Housed in a frame of the artist's design and construction