GEORGINA COBURN assesses the latest work from landscape artist Wendy Sutherland

WENDY Sutherland’s latest solo exhibition at Browns Gallery presents some superb examples of the artist’s engagement with the Northern landscape and dynamic experimentation with a variety of media. Sutherland is clearly grappling with her subject and distilling her style, led by creative process and exploration of technique.

Use of shellac, ink, acrylics, oils and in some works gold and silver leaf, have introduced a fluid and exciting range of textural possibilities to the artist’s depiction of the Highland landscape. In her best works, Sutherland possesses the ability to create depth and movement through intensity of hue, conveying the immensity and beauty of the natural environment through strength of form and sensitivity of palette.

Colour relationships feel organically wrought, and her intricate, richly layered handling of materials and variety of mark add new satisfying layers of interpretation to the work for the viewer.

Whilst there is ample evidence of Sutherland’s skill and insight as an artist, there are also works in this show that are predictable and do not represent the same degree of creative investment seen and felt in works such as Water Over And Under, Night Shadows, Surface Land, Orkney Sands or February Walk.

If the overall artistic statement was solely led by the quality of works such as these, the exhibition would represent a compelling, definitive and undeniably strong artistic signature throughout. Lack of consistency in some of the work on display gives a variable impression overall, which does not equal the beauty, energy and promise of the finest works in the exhibition.

While due in part to the evolutionary aspect of this body of work, the inclusion of work such as Red Is For Rubies, an unconvincing decorative piece, or Blue Sky, Auburn Land, which feels like a flat repetitive prototype of a landscape, diminish the strength of the visual statement overall.

In heightened contrast a work such as Water Over And Under (Oil on Canvas) presents the viewer with a great liquid sweep of pure energy. Separation of pigment and layers of emerging under-painting, together with the intensity of purple, ultramarine, fresh green and cerulean blue, contribute to the extraordinary movement within the image.

The horizon line shifts and moves, animated by paint handling and the optics of colour. Water Over And Under is brimming with life and feels more like a moving image than one of standard two dimensions. This quality of elusiveness lies at the heart of the ever changing nature of the Highland landscape and at the core of painting as a discipline. Sutherland communicates both beautifully in this image and in Surface Land, a magnificent tapestry of colour and texture.

Similarly February Walk (Shellac, ink and oils on canvas) in its tantalising layers of marks and subtle combination of deep blues and browns, conveys emotional depth in the sombre land mass, seen through a delicate veil of misty rain. It is where the human gaze upon the land is felt most acutely (and perhaps abstractly) that Sutherland’s work really comes into its own.

Night Shadows has within it a Romantic spirit akin to the work of Caspar David Friedrich. Although the human figure is absent (unlike much of Friedrich’s work), this mysterious nocturnal scene with its depth of green and delicacy of the foreground (where the viewer intuitively stands) conveys a potent vulnerability and spirit of confrontation with the enormity and mystery of nature.

The weight of the shadowy mountain which seems to extend far beyond the parameters of the physical canvas implies a human gaze into the face of nature. Like all great Romantic compositions, it is a meeting of both form and feeling.

A number of works on paper give a fascinating insight into the creative process of the artist; Tide Forms (Watercolour) and Crest (Mixed Media) reveal Sutherland’s ongoing engagement with her materials, developed further in her large scale compositions. Frozen Jade (Oil and silver leaf on canvas) is an interesting work in this respect, presenting an almost Expressionistic handling in the emerald surge of paint.

There is a feeling of concentrated observation and immensity in this image which often manifests in Sutherland’s treatment of landscape as a whole. The drawing Buachuille Etive Mor in graphite and acrylic is also a welcome inclusion in the exhibition, demonstrating the immediacy of response to the landscape in terms of the drawn mark, a quality which is dominant in larger scale layered mixed media work such as Surface Land or February Walk.

There are significant works to be savoured in this exhibition, and if Sutherland continues to develop her vision, led by a sustained level of engagement with technique, her next solo exhibition should be spectacular.

© Georgina Coburn, 2010

Links

• Wendy Sutherland
• Browns Gallery