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Brad Aldridge:
Lydon Fine Art
There is a reflective peace to be found in scenes of nature's luxury, her innate perfections of form and growth. It is a peace that reminds us that there are elements of the world beyond those we generally grasp by the senses. In the paintings of Brad Aldridge: Half Light - Iconic images, luxurious foliage, luminous sky, and nearly always the presence of water, suggestive of journey and movement within the stillness, invoke a Romantic vision of nature as expressive of beauty and order. That holds a special balm in this day and age. Romanticism itself was a reaction against the Enlightenment, an elevation above the rationalism that had come to dominate life and thought. Aldridge's paintings encourage the spectator to lay aside the transgressions of science and technology, those unruly children of rationalism in all their modern manifestations, and enter into communion with a moment of unruffled, arcadian calm. These are views of a lavish natural world whose hush and richness seem on the brink of imparting secrets. Tranquility lays upon the streams with their still reflections. Mystery infuses the early or late hour, the beckoning meander of the riverbed, the young moon crowning the sky. A welcoming plenty is unfurled in the lush foliage. When human signs do appear, but they are distant, elements redolent of absence rather than presence: quiet sunlight on a distant graveyard, barely seen through the trees in Divergent Paths (oil on panel: 36 x 80 in.), or the drowsy ruins of the old Cistercian abbey in Tinturn on the Wye (oil on panel: 25-1/4 x 14-1/2 in.). The half-light of early morning or late evening binds a further intimacy between the viewer and the natural scene; early walks, in particular, are usually those rambles one takes alone. The Beckoning Dawn (oil on panel: 48 x 24 in.) presents a strictly muted palette of tan and brown, delineating all-but-indistinct contours of foliage as masses of lightly-brushed color, with the misty sky beyond just beginning to be touched with pearlescent light. As in the images of German romantic painter Caspar David Friedrich (1774-1840), there is a sense of right and proper isolation, of man alone in communion with nature. But where Friedrich found romanticism's passionate tumult, the experience Aldridge suggests is one more of rest and repose, a restfulness too often precluded by the swift pace of modern life. In part, the appeal of these secluded visions is based on a handling of spatial study which draws the viewer into the image with illusions of depth and by suggesting unexplored vistas just beyond what is depicted. To define these deep spaces Aldridge employs an element which stands mid-ground, effectively veiling a portion of the scene from view. In The Pale Ray of Evening (oil on panel: 60 x 36 in.) that element is a thicket of trees, set far back beyond a spacious foreground, and yet, opening at the right into still further distance into which the evening light, still cast upon the far foliage, beckons. The dense screen of branches functions likewise in Streambed at Evening (oil on panel: 22 x 15-1/2 in.), where the dark foreground is partly closed off by the dark scatterings of green, through which is seen the gleam of a bright swathe of open field. These are images with a definite spatial existence, the placement of such half-concealing elements emphasizing the openness and three-dimensional depth of the scene, defining foreground, mid-ground, and distance as successive spaces each leading the spectator further and further into the painting. At the same time the artist rolls through these images with a mediating linear element, generally a river or path, firmly uniting the closest foreground with the beckoning distance and complementing the suggestion of a reality that extends far back and beyond the area which may be seen.
The gold framing adds to the contemplative mood, at times in the shape of a Gothic window, topped with a pointed arch, and otherwise in weight and gilding recalling the frames of holy icons of the Byzantine tradition. The artist hand-crafts the frames himself, creating each frame specifically for the image it is to enclose. An icon is intended to be devotional; not a visual image merely illustrating a scene, but a doorway drawing the viewer into a transcendent experience. Viewing an icon, one seeks to enter into communion with the spirit represented therein. Aldridge's paintings are infused with a similar, if secular, mood. Not simply pleasant images, they attempt to evoke something that one experiences, evanescent, beyond words, when on long walks or out in the early morning among nature's open spaces. Why does traditional painting such as this retain its appeal and freshness, in the face of so much in post-modern art that seeks to discard the subject entirely, scatter it, break it, abjure it -- in the face of so much, even today, in which convolutions of invisible conceptual structure seem to weigh in as far more important in their philosophizing than in an artist's mastery of techniques, his or her ability to conjure light, image and atmosphere from a canvas in a simple, yet deeply satisfying scene? Put quite simply, there is pleasure in a competent piece of work, and further, in one that responds to age-old human need and want. That is not to deny the value of abstraction. There are many superb examples of evocative and expressive work, freed of the subject and revealing new looks into pure form and pure color; but they are more mental, more scientific, a derivation of the impulse of the modern era. The figure retains its allure; and the figurative landscape, likewise. It was the nineteenth century which romanticized the natural world, and from it spring our impressions of nature as heroic, spiritual, suffused with the divine. But long before that, even tens of thousands of years before, there was a much simpler meaning implicit in meadows and murmuring streams. Coming upon a green pastoral landscape such as that in the triptych Summer Dawn (oil on panel: 41-1/2 x 72 in.), neolithic man may well have rejoiced, for it would have meant the most elemental satisfaction and security: shelter, water, game in abundance. Such instincts are still within us; and today, more divorced from such pastoral interludes than at any time in human history as urban development consumes field, forest and even farmland more swiftly and heedlessly than ever before, we hunger for the simple fulfillment such places represent. Expressing these sensibilities with their similarity to 19th-century Romanticism, the artist employs a loose, 20th-century brushstroke in many passages, lending an aura of indistinctness best observed by stepping back somewhat, and letting the image invoke the wish to draw near and enter into it. Brad Aldridge: Half Light - Iconic images extends an invitation to wander -- by the sides of deep rivers, through unspoiled pastures, into a realm of calmness, order and abundance. Thirteen large oil paintings and select smaller oil sketches are on exhibit through March 31, 2007. --Katherine R. Lieber Katherine R. Lieber has edited ArtScope.net's Visual Arts reviews since 1998. Ms. Lieber is Editor and Associate Producer for ArtScope.net. |
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