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).
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The first thing I noticed when browsing through Frank Gardner’s marine paintings was the recurrence of the wall motif. In towns — on terra firma — it was people against the walls; here, at sea, it is the boats. But perhaps the artist takes the contrast up a notch, to a level where it mutates into a real clash: that of the sea and the land and that of living on a constant move and in a permanent dwelling placed on the ground. Planes of bright single hue, which formed the walls in the town, stream down into the see and break down into shimmering reflections. The stability and quietude of the city is lost, the inconstancy and irregularity of the sea is gained.
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Frank Gardner is an American painter (and art instructor) currently residing and working in Mexico. Oil is his medium; he applies it to cotton and linen canvases to create outdoor scenes and landscapes involving farm, urban and marine subject-matter. Frank Gardner publishes his work online on his blog and on his website. Many of his works are for sale via art galleries listed on the galleries page of his website. In today’s review I would like to talk about his village/urban scenes and particularly the puzzling and captivating contrast of the small human figure and the surrounding monumental buildings.
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