Virginia artist Ray Berry walks a line between representation and suggestion, his strongly seasonal landscapes reveal themselves on closer inspection to be strikingly physical applications of paint.
He works both in oil and the difficult hot wax process of encaustic, the latter giving even greater leeway for producing a textural surface, to the point of being almost sculptural.
The brusque application of paint and rough scumbling over many surfaces gives Berry’s forms intriguingly indistinct edges that can be perceived as simultaneously soft or hard. In his landscapes it can impart a tonalist quality, and in his still life pieces, a fascinatingly shifting object-to-ground relationship.
The textural paint application in his landscapes can also give their otherwise still, contemplative subjects an element of suggested movement — from the nature of the directional masses within the surface of the paint itself — adding the the push-pull of contrasting elements.
Berry’s work will be on display at an exhibit titled “Hidden Hanover” at the Flippo Gallery of Randolph-Macon College in Ashland VA, from tomorrow, April 19, to May 31, 2015.
[Via Duane Keiser (see my previous posts on Duane Keiser)]
