Looking at the work of painter Donald Jurney puts me in mind of a number of English, French, Dutch and American landscape painters who were at their peak in the years just prior to the advent of French Impressionism.
His pastoral countrysides and sweeping mountain views are often framed in intriguing plays of light and dark; large areas of shadow lie across the land, punctuated and accented by glimmers of light against mountains or between crowns of trees.
In the limited size of the images on Jurney’s web site and the sites of galleries representing his work, you can only get a vague idea of the texture of the paint strokes in his approach. Fortunately, there is at least one close up of his work, and another slightly smaller close up image on the blog of Quidley & Company galleries that allow you to see his richly textural paint surface.
Jurney uses a carefully controlled, muted palette, with subtle variations in color accompanied by strong value contrasts.
His paintings carry a wonderful sense of place, but simultaneously suggest a feeling of timelessness, as if carrying the traditions of several centuries of landscape painters forward in an unbroken line.
[Via Lia Waichulis and The Hidden Place]
