This series evokes abstracted sceneries and spectral landscapes, emulating the experience of gazing out over your environment, reading its essence and dynamics, rather than individual components. Each painting works through stylization, methodically deconstructing and bringing into being the feel of a view within the painting.

Cargo freights in the cold - Oil on canvas, 92x71cm - 2021

Bay view #3 - Oil on fabric, 78x60cm - 2021

The void in between - Acrylic and oil on canvas, 78x62cm - 2021

By the window #2 - Acrylic and oil on paper, 100x63cm

By the window #1 - Acrylic and oil on fabric, 58x43cm - 2021

Stacking parcels - Acrylic and oil on fabric, 80x61cm -2021

Where the gaze splits into two - Oil on canvas, 86x64cm - 2021

Travel ad clickbait #1 - Acrylic and oil on paper, 91x68cm - 2021

Construction site #1 - Oil on fabric, 84x69cm - 2021

Construction site #1 - Oil on fabric, 76x61cm - 2021

Street crossing figures - Oil on fabric, 74x72cm - 2021

Windows layout #2 - Acrylic and oil on canvas, 87x63cm -2021

Windows layout #1 - Acrylic and oil on paper, 110x88cm - 2021

Vertical and horizontal brush-marks, resolutely non-organic and associated with more geometric abstract painting, make up potential backgrounds or foregrounds, depending on their relationship with the other pictorial elements.

These sharper bands of color create a sense of space in concert with more fluctuating areas of gradients and discordant hues. The eye acclimates itself to the level of abstraction through those constructions of lines and multiple layers, wanders and creates its own path to recompose a perspective, a view.

The titles of the works, reinforce their earthbound subject matter, leading us through Cargo freights in the cold and onto The straight, then reminding us of our own experience of viewing and standing within landscape: Where the gaze splits into two lands.

The mechanical strokes employed relate to geological stratification and, in their most luminous, indicate reflections of light, but they also create a visual noise reminiscent of pixel deterioration. This moves our focus away from abstract painting to other analogies we experience of landscape through our digital communications.

The reflection of the fantasy that a landscape could be effectively compressed into either a picture plain or an electronic screen comes to the fore. This leaves the opportunity to think about the process of artistic stylization and the process of digital recreation. Those two reproductive techniques align with our own optical experience of de-focused viewing; at a glance the features of a tree or a human figure within a larger view start to vanish to the point of resembling one another, holding similar weight and presence within an abstracted vista.

THOMAS GILLANT

(1)Void motion (2)Every lining has a silver cloud (3)Deep fugazis (4)Gazing upon vanishing fields