Review: Landscapes and more

Take a quick look at the paintings of the three artists whose work comprises the Land, Water, & City Scapes show at Hentschel Art Gallery and two similarities are quick to see. They all use oils and they all have been taught about Impressionism. Take your time to look at the paintings and you will see three different styles and themes.

None of these artists paint in the Impressionist style even though they all accept the hazy distortion of scene that the style creates. Those scenes range from a fisherman mending his net to the volcanic cliffs of O’ahu to forests in winter.

Joseph Lombardo emphasizes form and color. This is disconcerting as the shapes are natural but the colors are out of place. Up close, his “Oak Savannah” seems to be a depressing post-fire landscape. From a distance, the brownish-yellow ground shines as though full of light-generating life. His “Roark Bluff” resembles a Tiffany lamp. Lombardo’s use of broad brush strokes and thickly-applied paint help to create the impression of stained glass. The message he seems to be conveying is that nature is his cathedral. His smaller paintings, which in the show are spring or summer scenes, are more traditional in color and have correspondingly smaller brush strokes. However, the use of paint to create layers is still a favored technique.

Rodgers Naylor’s paintings also have layers but he achieves that look by placement of objects. His “Red Green” is an example of how he uses distinct visual levels. Overgrown grass leads to a truck, then to another truck, then to the tall structures of agriculture and industry, all capped by the sky. There is a theme of personal spiritual awakening in his work. In “Road Trip” the color of a long, flat stretch of highway is wrong. From a distance, though, it is clear that the colors of the road echo those of the sky. This is the effect of a long road trip, when the sky and the highway seem to merge and the mind wanders into new terrority. A touch of humor can be seen in Naylor’s “American Foursquare.” Not only is the farmhouse in the foursquare style, there are four farm buildings and four distinct horizontal layers. In contrast, the painting is a non-square rectangle.

Philip R. Jackson’s works stand out due to their small size, fineness of brush strokes, and use of linen and panels instead of canvas. His style is best described as pen and ink, only with color and oils. His paintings have that two-dimensional look where the use of lines and shading, rather than color or physical layering of paint, defines the scene. Some of the paintings seem only to replicate a setting. In other pieces, diversity of shades within limited colors create a focal intensity. The use of wide white borders in the framing seemed to add sterility to the scenes, as though they were slices of Earth placed an a microscope slide.

M.R. Field is editor of Leading Vioces: Iowa.