These contemplative pieces conjoin portraits with detailed scenery into felicitous combinations. Compositional harmony transcends into an atmospheric psychic quality, where calm and confidence interlock and create tight and streamlined mental images of peace, and faith into what the future portends. We directly witness the artist’s interest in subtle psychological exploration, covert in still life due to the absence of human subjects. In some ways, people from the audience were the “models” for the florals, literally subjected to strong light effects; here the artist abandons drastic contrasts to make room for the children, and draw some general conclusions from the way they blend with their surroundings.
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Alvin Richard (visit his website and blog) is a Canadian self taught artist who paints still life, urban and outdoor scenes with exuberant optimism and such an unflinching energy and directness as to unveil before the viewer a bonanza of life’s sparkling possibilities. As a skillful photorealist, he renders transparent and metallic objects with meticulous accuracy — but they are rarely the focus of his paintings. To produce multi-layered, sometimes labyrinth compositions he assembles areas of color, arranging them in geometrically complex structures, not without a hint of the abstract. Light shines through these transformations as the unifying force that binds all elements together into pulsating and vibrant works of art, such as these florals
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There is always the dilemma of choosing paintings for a review. For this one I want to focus on the series on brushes because they represent an antithesis to the broken glass pieces, thus closing a cycle. Here the theme of destruction encounters a worthy opponent — the brushes embody creation, and they physically tower erect and quietly valorous, and undaunted. The artist depicts the tools of his craft in the process of cleaning and maintenance, implying replenishment and constancy that can stand up to the notion of ruin and obliteration. So, to be frank to the end, the dilemma in this case was fleeting: if there is an opportunity to show how abstract concepts summon and resist each other within the larger context of the artist’s entire output, I grab it.
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These chiaroscuro sculpted toys stand out as miniature totems. Placed upon a pedestal, they soon transcend the connotation of child’s play, crossing the boundaries of amusement to the much more serious realm of (animal) worship. That is a provocation: is the transition possible without the violation of a spiritual sentiment? Perhaps it is — native Americans, who were known to sanctify various fauna, were often considered naive, credulous and psychologically uncomplicated, all of the qualities that make children so charming. The artist’s choice to depict strictly domesticated animals comfortably returns us to a more customary setting, in a way tying the loose thread of hypothetical historical time travel.
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Todd Ford (visit his website and blog) is an American artist painting photorealistic still life with conventional subjects — but arranging them in exotic and highly saturated compositions. And at times that means disfiguring or even destroying the depicted item; such is the case with his series of broken bottles paintings. The sharp naked edges of the glass literally cut into and slice the space around them, as if taking a blind revenge on their implicit host. The necks, upside-down or turning away from the viewer, as if desecrated, appear as trophies of destruction itself. Yet, the round softness of the intact glass necks and bottoms counterpoises the irregularity of the broken angular lines, implying a literal synthesis: all the pieces, sharp and round, are made of glass.
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