Olivo

Comment

Comment by Resident Curator on May 23, 2016 at 7:03pm

Curator’s Comments:

 

I admit that I’m uncertain how I feel about viewing some of these tree paintings within a similar landscape. While I appreciate the obvious associations, and ability to compare realism versus pictorial idealism, shifts in color etc., the juxtaposition also reminds me that I am viewing a painting rather than entering a space.  However, I completely enjoy this recent work Olivo because of that same pictorial ambiguity.  I imagine the bottom portion of the painting is executed on clear Plexiglas, and the top section is left transparent so that the viewer can complete the picture with the (photographic) actual landscape.  The slight titling of the frame also sets up an interesting spatial relationship, as the tree appears fully grounded in the space, while the wide frame casts a small and faint shadow on the flat painting surface.   I also enjoy the cooler blue color in the main subject and smaller line of trees when set up against the yellow-green foliage on the horizon.  It reverses expectations of atmospheric perspective, while creating a hierarchy of compositional form. While I enjoy many of your paintings as illusionistic landscapes, this image sets up other aesthetic questions about realism, perception and natural/artificial representation.