Because Tom LaDuke would be lecturing to our class, and because he was having an opening the Sunday before the lecture, I thought it would be good to see his art in person. Besides, Samantha Fields indicated that it would be hard to understand his work purely by seeing the slides only. The monochromatic quality of the images are such that a personal experience can not be replaced. In his landscape paintings, LaDuke creates vast atmospheric voids with thin strips of land at the lower edge. Hans Burkhardt writes, "These low horizons contain an array of degraded Southern California landscape elements: crisscrossing high-tension power lines, mile-long warehouses, office parks and studio lots, thousands of pinpoint headlights. As a counterpoint to the manmade landscape, we catch an occasional glimpse of silhouetted mountain peaks and treetops. Most of the paintings are executed in military enamel on aluminum, their exquisite details precisely rendered in fine pencil and watercolor. The great skies are shrouded in smoky, matte tones of dark mocha, cocoa or gunmetal grays, representing night, fog, smog or infinite space. Reminiscent of the Northern European landscape tradition with their melancholic, engulfing voids and near abstraction, they create a portentous mood verging on the apocalyptic." He also makes sculptures out of clay that look very lifelike. I liked the juxtaposition of the sculptures and the paintings.
No comments:
Post a Comment