Westgate gardens

Comment

Comment by Resident Curator on September 6, 2013 at 9:12am

Curator’s Comment:

 

Westgate Gardens is a lush, almost quixotic landscape.  The vertical ‘falling’ lines of the yellow-green willow wonderfully counter the horizontal cooler grass.  The section of sky in the upper right also nicely balances the encrusted density of the allover impasto scumbling; the broken color of the blue harmonizes but provides a lighter visual rest.  The tiny figures in the boat in the center of the piece are almost overlooked through the thick brush. The smallness of humanity against nature is suggested, though many of the scenes seem intentionally landscaped, or at least are impacted by social intervention.  I didn’t see it in your accompanying text, but several pieces seem to draw from well known Post-Impressionist landscapes.  Hambrook Marshes for example is reminiscent of VanGogh’s Crows in a Wheatfield, while the winter bridge is decidedly more Monet-esque.  But maybe it’s just that every painterly landscape with a curved Japanese footbridge recalls Monet?  Either way, these works don’t feel at all derivative.  In fact I see them as airy and fresh. It may be the primacy of the full landscape experience that brings one back to their former experience of such.