The decorative association in these bright, warm paintings is so strong that I think about white dresses bedecked with orange spots (or flowers). Incidentally, these series depict autumn, when nature changes attires — to something more austere — and the artist captures the lyricism of this languorous process. The contrast of the white and the orange is so striking as to almost scream from the canvas; it doesn’t, however — it sings instead. To ensure consonance, the artist provides space for additional colors, such as the green of the leaves and grass, the blue of the river and the brown of the mountains. The latter two produce a background harmony that supports the melody at the front.
Read the rest of this entry »
If you enjoyed this post, make sure you subscribe to my RSS feed!
Takeyce Walter is an American artist who publishes her work online on her website and blog. She paints mostly landscapes, working on a variety of themes: rural and farming environment, seasonal changes and water surfaces (sea, rivers, lakes) under varying conditions. The paintings of rivers are the subject of today’s review.
It is difficult to write about these works — it is much easier to experience them. The scenes encourage listening rather than speaking; immobility instead of motion. The duplicate compositional conception of a water plane copying the sky and the trees leads to cogitations on the role of the artist. The mirroring water surface transfers “what it sees” onto its liquid canvas, producing the most believable illusion of three dimensionality. Isn’t it what the artist also strives to do? What is the purpose of a landscape artist — to copy nature as it is, or offer individual interpretations, such as the impressionists did? These paintings do not provide any clear answers; their merit lies in restating the questions.
Read the rest of this entry »
If you enjoyed this post, make sure you subscribe to my RSS feed!
I was putting off a more detailed discussion about Frank Gardner’s light technique mainly because I couldn’t quite get my head around it. I haven’t yet seen such light in contemporary work published on the Internet, but it did remind me of some works by a known Armenian painter, Martiros Saryan . Starting from there, I realized that these landscapes deliver the natural phenomenon of sunlight in an untamed, radical fashion, which in comparison to the cooler artwork of most North American artists may appear as a deliberate intensification. Either way, such treatment of light endows the works with a strong oriental flavor. This is a very crude comparison, but in some ways, Mexico to the US is like Armenia to Russia (for instance, both are sunlit and south of their respective nations).
Read the rest of this entry »
If you enjoyed this post, make sure you subscribe to my RSS feed!
