Mesa Ride

Comment

Comment by Resident Curator on June 27, 2020 at 3:03pm

Curator's Comments:

 

Looking at this painting entitled Mesa Ride this afternoon, I was struck by the clean formality of the color blocking.  The pale orange and lavender tints within the horse and rider create a particularly unexpected harmony. The accompanying thin outlines extending between figure and ground contrast the larger planes of color, and visually connect their forms. The vertical elongation of the picture plane also makes me admire the unusual compositional choices for the subject matter.  It’s a fresh take on the iconic cowboy of the sprawling plains. The related piece Afternoon carries similar delineations between chromatic patches, and then provides a sudden shift in the background landscape.  The inexplicable interruption of the land caused me to take a longer look, as the thin trail of clouds in the sky suggest an otherwise continuation of abstracted, but plausible space. Again, the relationship between complementary blue-violet and ochre hues are somewhat diagonally counterbalanced, and yet provide a pleasing reprieve from local color. These horse and rider paintings deftly marry some of the formal considerations enjoyed in your non-objective works.