The subject of art and the landscape is well-trodden terrain, more so in the past two decades than in the heyday of experimental painting (i.e. beginning with Impressionism in the late 19th century). The reasons for the resilience of painting and depicting the land are varied and complex. We live in a world that has become painfully aware of a fragile ecology. Hence, artists have responded in many ways to work with the land and not merely to picture it. But the land continues to offer an eternal view, whereas the subject matter of city and industrial progress (an important one in the history of 20th century art) carries with it a sense of unfulfilled ambitions or ever-changing conditions. Social commentary, criticism, and irony reminds us that we cannot create a perfect world. Nature is delivered to us, already created, no matter how much we do to alter or diminish it. Even though it is the youngest of art's genres (history painting, portraiture, still life), the practice of painting the land delivers a truth of locality.

The selection of works for this exhibition is not meant to be thorough or a complete story. It is by nature and title, misshapen, as characterized by the art of the 20th century -- artists moulding visions of what we see and know to be true. One artist working in the early part of the 20th century, William Blair Bruce, has been framed with three currently active artists who bring life and vigour to the medium and the subject matter. The selection was not based on a particular locale, but a truth to painting and, to paraphrase the Star Trek credo, to boldly go where everyone has gone before. Each of the artists can be seen as the itinerant modernist -- born in one place, traveling to another, imagining something else. The five William Blair Bruce seascapes were done in a spiritual exile, as Bruce had left Canada in the 1880s and lived and worked in Europe until his untimely death in 1906.

His view from Sweden was not so much the Baltic Sea, but perhaps Canada beyond the horizon. It is interesting to note that he returned to this subject in his desire to record the ever-changing view, the movement of sea, clouds, chromatic and light conditions. Bruce painted from life, but was not afraid to experiment, and saw his material as paint. His notebooks from the 1890s record the changing conditions of light and time, and his awareness of how paint and colour works -- a tool to create images rather than simulate reality.

Likewise, Wanda Koop, Enoc Pèrez, and Peter Woodford-Smith are caught between locales, and involved in the creation of views with painting. Koop's Green Room installation and "notes" were painted in Holland. She responded to the surroundings, but also incorporating other “impressions”, the diverse influences that have shaped the physical landscape and the “national culture”. The four Green Room paintings are framed by a white border on a green painted wall -- the room demarcated by a cross between a bilious sea green and cupric (copper) green. Each has a fluorescent “dot” in the middle. Not a phenomenon viewed, but something from the mind's eye -- the blind spot, an apparition, or a warning. The notes, a series of 5"x7" studies, give evidence of the immediacy of her painting, how quickly ideas come to mind, and the mind's eye. Everything shifts, and everything is an experiment.

Peter Woodford-Smith lives on the edge of Sydney, at the famous Bondi Beach. From his preferred painting spot he looks towards the city, although unable to see the familiar man-made tourist landmarks, the Harbour Bridge, the Opera House, etc.. He is, as a consequence, an urbanist at the edge of a continent, inventing nature and scenes (even though some of the landmarks in his work are there and real). He works small and quickly: the ideas tumble out, shift and leap. He returns to certain "motifs" (the nocturnals, for example), or draws our attention to out-of-the-ordinary occurrences, such as a passing blimp. He changes his palette, not as nature changes, but as the nature of the paint changes.

Since the advent of photography painters have used it as a source. Enoc Pèrez, however, uses what could be described a non-descript, undramatic photographs -- the type one would snap on a vacation, or perhaps returning home for the summer. He re-invests the value of painting, its chemical nature and properties rather than resting on the authenticity or authority of the photographic source, what has been called the "dead nature" of photography (the observation of French cultural theorist Roland Barthes).

Morning is a view of Puerto Rico, painted in his Brooklyn studio. Not so much the sentiment of homely attachment but adding an aura and majesty to the oft-snapped tropical beach, the vacation shot. Under is the only painting in the exhibition with a figure, a girl seen swimming underwater. It is obviously not a landscape, but what one may imagine could be beneath the water of Bruce's seascapes, shown on an opposite wall. Andy Warhol (who often used photo sources for his work) once remarked that there was nothing below the surface of his paintings -- what you see is what you get -- but Pèrez shows this not to be the only story.

Ihor Holubizky

Curator

The Kelowna Art Gallery acknowledges the support of The Australia Council towards the participation of Peter Woodford-Smith in this exhibition. William Blair Bruce works are on loan from the Art Gallery of Hamilton.

Installation views from 1900 - 2000: Paintings From A Misshapen Century

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