carrying fish II

Comment

Comment by Resident Curator on December 14, 2013 at 1:38pm

Curator’s Comment:

 

When I look at your local landscapes and genre paintings I get a strong sense of place.  But despite your expert craft, I also think in some cases less may be more.  Carrying Fish II is a good example of a piece that allows the paint to express the emotion as much as the detail in the subject being illustrated.  The impressionistic, thickly impastoed application of broken color particularly lends itself to capturing fleeting movement.  Cooler blue-violet cast shadows on the ground are the only evidence that suggests the painting breaks away from local color, but this unexpected hue also spatially anchor the figures to their environment.  I also like how the brush/palette knife strokes visually connect, or pull the figures back into the water. Pulling the Boat to Shore is another skillfully rendered piece, which nicely balances the chunky blocks of color with more smoothly articulated definition.  Centralized activity in the hauling of the vessel is offset by the radiating cast shadows; there’s a believable sensation of the fishermen’s’ feet collectively sinking into the wet sand.  The other paintings of the fishing village enjoy nuanced tonalities, and strong formal construction of space.  But I ultimately feel a greater intimacy in the works that include figures.  In Carrying Fish and Pulling the Boat, I am invited into the movement, if not directly.  In the other scenes I am treated to solid painting of picturesque places, but remain somewhat of an outsider.