luminist landscapes…
June 27, 2008
June 25, 2008
June 18, 2008
June 16, 2008
Adrian Gottlieb
Adrian Gottlieb’s work shows the effect of his training in Florence under both Charles Cecil and Daniel Graves. The emphasis on on light effect through a deep chiaroscuro, built on solid drawing, give a strong naturalistic result. A very limited colour palette keeps the emphasis on tonal relationships.
Gottlieb is clearly a man who has set out to master his craft, to become a true draughtsman. And his dedication shows. I will be interested to see where his work leads in years to come.
June 12, 2008
June 7, 2008
Scott Burdick
Scott Burdick makes impasto brushwork seem like that most obvious choice in the world. His facility with paint allows for some impressive displays of virtuosity. It is this, his bold direct manner, which first attracts one to his work. This technical strength is evident in his charcoal and even in rare watercolours too.
Burdick’s work consists largely of paintings of people, environments and landscapes from his travels around the world with is wife (Susan Lyon, also a painter) to countries such as India, Nepal, Tibet and Italy. It can be quite a delight to see somebody’s response to a certain country expressed in paint so eloquently. His travel journals on his website, illustrated by photographs as well as paintings and sketches, make for a good read.
There is, in art that depicts foreign lands always a tension between documenting in a fairly objective way what is to be seen, and the need to show an artistic voice that is more than mere transcriber of reality. This is particularly in the case of the work of 19th century orientalists such as Jean Leon Gerome. His almost photographic realism has the semblance of truth to it. His almost scientific attention to detail, often incidental and seemingly irrelevant, give the appearance of objective documentary painting. Yet his work is, in many ways, the product of preconceived ideas of the “Orient”, and Gerome gave apparent verisimilitude to already imagined conceptions of the Near East.
Now, where does this leave Burdick’s work? Certainly he seems to search for images that conform to the ideas we have of a country, and you will find in his paintings no tourist alongside locals for instance. From his travel journals, it appears he endeavours to go off the beaten track and find a more ‘authentic’ experience, which he responds to in a way that I find nicely balanced between that documentary approach and a delightfully artistic one.
June 3, 2008
Fred Cuming RA
Fred Cuming’s landscapes are predominately seascapes. He seems to delight in the way the eye is dazzled by bright light coming from both the sun and a thousand bright reflections in the sea. His broken brushwork and brilliant use of eliminating unnecassary information gives the impression of the eye being slightly overwhelmed, blinded and disorientated.
His work has something of the great Romatic landscape painters, such as Caspar David Friedrich, in the way there is almost always a solitary figure or two within the landscape. They are part of this great nature, and they also observe it and contemplate it, becoming a representation of the viewer of the painting, suggesting a response.
Combine all this with a wonderful sensitivity for colour, and you have a painter whose landscapes go beyond a simple “image of a beach”. There is a strong sense of an artistic vision, a creative translation of the perceived world, but one in which nature is still held as the great sublime genius.
* Google him for more, as there are countless galleries who stock his work *
The Hidden Place 