Canadian artist Martin Wittfooth is showcasing his most ambitious work to date with "Deus ex Terra," a comprehensive exhibition that reimagines animals as divine forces governing the natural world. The solo show, currently on display at Corey Helford Gallery in Los Angeles through October 4, 2025, presents a collection of monumental oil paintings that celebrate nature's eternal power through mythical animal deities.
Nature has served as a timeless subject throughout art history, from Sandro Botticelli's "Primavera" as a symbol of rebirth to Giuseppe Arcimboldo's personification in "The Four Seasons." It has influenced major art movements from Romanticism to Impressionism. Now, Wittfooth adds his own interpretation to this rich tradition, focusing on wild animals as the embodiment of natural forces rather than mere inhabitants of the wilderness.
The exhibition is structured around two central themes: the four seasons and the four classical elements. In Wittfooth's vision, these animals don't simply exist within nature – they actively shape and determine it, embodying organic rhythms, cycles, and fundamental principles. The artist demonstrates a clear preference for horses throughout the series, while also featuring wolves, deer, polar bears, and rams as central figures in his large-scale works.
Wittfooth's seasonal paintings showcase remarkable symbolic clarity. "Aspect of Winter" depicts a towering wolf standing over an ice floe, its blue pelt frozen with densely packed snow against a desolate, frigid landscape. The painting's striking color palette immediately identifies it as a winter scene, even without knowledge of its title. "Aspect of Autumn" presents a massive deer trudging through a birch forest, its head masked by a flurry of orange and red leaves that gently peel away and drift toward the earth below.
The harmony between animal and environment is particularly evident in the autumn piece, where the deer's massive antlers sprout and snake through the sky, closely resembling the surrounding birch trees that frame the canvas. This visual parallel speaks to the painting's essential message: there is no separation between animal, season, and nature itself. The deer's antlers and the forest trees exist as unified elements of a greater whole.
For his exploration of the four classical elements, Wittfooth returns to horses as his primary subjects. Air is expressed as a billowing cloud sculpted into the shape of a horse's head, while fire manifests as a volcano riddled with cracks and flowing molten lava. Earth appears as an ancient collection of fossils, mushrooms, and ferns, and water takes form as a submerged sculpture overtaken by seaweed, fish, and barnacles.
There's a fascinating contrast within these elemental paintings, where horses – typically associated with agility and swift movement – are rendered as permanent fixtures of nature with existences stretching back millions of years. This sense of continuity represents the exhibition's central message about nature's eternal character. The artist suggests that nature's permanence is not just how it is, but how it should remain.
Wittfooth has long been preoccupied with humanity's troubled relationship with the natural world, particularly regarding the ongoing climate crisis and resource exploitation. "Deus ex Terra" serves as both celebration and warning, insisting that viewers confront the forces that have governed our world for millennia. The exhibition emphasizes that nature predates human life and deserves recognition as the fundamental force it has always been.
The exhibition also includes "Duel," a striking diptych featuring two rams preparing for battle, demonstrating the raw power and primal energy that Wittfooth sees as inherent in the natural world. These additional works complement the seasonal and elemental themes while adding another layer of meaning about nature's competitive and survival-driven aspects.
"Martin Wittfooth: Deus ex Terra" represents perhaps the artist's most comprehensive statement on nature's sublimity and eternal character. By transforming familiar animals into divine beings, Wittfooth creates a visual mythology that honors both the timeless beauty of the natural world and its fundamental importance to human existence. The exhibition runs through October 4, 2025, at Corey Helford Gallery, located at 571 South Anderson Street, Unit 1, Los Angeles, California.
