Nicholás Uribe from Columbia is a painter whose website it is worth spending a good while having a look around. It’s a nice website, and you can see all of his paintings in very high resolution. He has loads of pictures to see, going back a number of years, showing the development and progression of his work. But mostly it’s because his work is so compelling to look at.
Largely figurative, Uribe’s paintings have and interesting look to them. For a while he removed pretty much all colour from his palette, to concentrate on the effects of tone. Then it seems he limited his tonal range, to see how far a limited range of values could be pushed, creating these eery pale grey images, of haunting lonely figures. You can see his experiments with all sorts of ideas as you look throug his portfolio: integrating cubist ideas with naturalism; integrating elements of pop art and comic art with naturalism. More recently he has been painting on photographs, and even on prints of masterpaintings by painters such as Rembrandt and Velazquez. To see these developments is exciting to watch, and with Uribe’s technique is as superbly strong as it is, it is a delight.
The Hidden Place 
I’m not as convinced, I find these images a little stiff in terms of pose, composition and touch.
Comment by Phil Tyler — October 11, 2009 @ 11:04 am |