Exhibition of Recent Paintings: July 2006

Canadian painter Ross Penhall’s stylized and smartly composed interpretations of landscapes have earned him comparisons to past masters like Grant Wood and members of Canada’s early-20th-century Group of Seven. But as anyone familiar with Penhall’s work knows, the artist has developed a distinct style that is all his own. There is a kind of dramatic tension inherent in each of his paintings, a push-and-pull between the forces of man and nature that can also be read as an exquisite balance: More than anything else, Penhall’s compositions exude an air of tranquility derived from the near-perfect equilibrium of natural and unnatural elements. The paths visible in nearly all his paintings might divide and cut through the landscape, but they also serve to draw us into it, creating a feeling of intimacy.

This fine sense of balance, in fact, stretches even into Penhall’s studio practice, where the artist may reposition certain elements of the landscape in order to create a more compelling composition. This second layer of “landscaping” is part of what makes Penhall’s paintings so intriguing: His images do not merely depict scenes from nature; they represent a complex series of transformations that extends to the artist’s own hand.

In this current body of work we find Penhall taking his manipulation of compositions a step further, experimenting with reverse imagery. The idea of point-of-view—the way shifting one’s vantage point slightly can change the look of the entire world—has long fascinated Penhall, and paintings such as “Quattro” and “Right Brain Left Brain” bring this issue intriguingly to the foreground. The new paintings are marked by a sense of playfulness—a desire to take the landscape apart and reassemble it in a way that feels entirely fresh. A testament to Penhall’s inventive spirit, this new direction provides clear evidence of the artist’s fertile, ever-expanding practice.

"Sometimes a composition works best the way it appears in nature; sometimes it works better once elements are repositioned. I like to see what happens when I combine the two types: often, it's like turning a kaleidoscope--a whole new picture is created." -Ross Penhall