Cooling Towers

Comment

Comment by Clive Holloway on August 6, 2012 at 6:38am

Thank you very much for your comment and for the encouraging remarks - the paintings that you mention are without a doubt my own favourites and most successful ones in my eyes - generally ones on which I have been able to focus most and give more extended attention.

Comment by Resident Curator on August 4, 2012 at 9:51am

Curator’s Comment:

 

Cooling Towers has a foreboding presence because of its quietly hulking mass, but there is a clear sense of awe present in the colossal structure.  The muted color palette makes the towers recede slightly into a hazy light, suggesting a more organic substance.  The scumbled surface of the painting itself looks like clay or plaster; as if the towers were actually giant funerary urns.  Archaic or timeless against the whitish sky, the lack of smoke/cooling mist makes them inactive, or forlorn. The crossing power lines and verticality of the stack on the right belie the mood as one of contemporary dusk or twilight.  While scale isn’t indicated, I wonder if the work has an intimacy when viewed in person, reducing the immense forms to an even more manageable size. I must admit my partiality to your landscapes/structures than have reduced detail; in my opinion less is more.  In particular, I’m most attracted to the paintings entitled A Bit Black, West Yorkshire Mill Town, and the figurative work Brighton.  They each contain a stoic presence of subject, and a contemplative air that holds a sense of longing.  As if I don’t quite understand what’s below the surface of the subject; leaving me wanting more.