A simultaneous fascination with detail and uncluttered open spaces led to an unusual combination of the two for Nigel (NJ) Cox, an Irish born artist now living and working in London.

Cox calls his stye Photorealistic Minimalism, and gives a description here of its inception and of the original work that started him on this particular path.

The majority of his recent paintings in that style are of figures walking away from the viewer, prone and foreshortened, or otherwise positioned so that their faces are not a prominent part of the composition, forcing you to see the figure as a figure, not a portrait. This is not only an unusual compositional choice but a contrast to Cox’s other emphasis which is portraiture.

You can browse through pages of thumbnails on his site, either from the home page or the Paintings page, and can continue to click through the larger images in the pop-up window.

For even larger versions of his work, including the image above, top, “The Black Basque” (larger version here), see Cox’s blog, Paintings from the Street, which also includes work not shown in his primary site.

Cox paints in oil on linen, and works in the traditional method of layers of glazes.

Ukrainian painter Evgeni Gordiets was trained at the National School of Fine Arts, State University of Fine Arts and the State Academy of Fine Art, all in Kiev, Ukraine.

You will sometimes hear his paintings referred to as “sunny” or “serene” Surrealism. Though I doubt that Gordiets adheres to the actual tenants of the original Surrealists, his work does show their influence, but without the intention to shock or disturb. Instead, he offers a contemplative twist on reality, painted in a bright, detailed manner.

His work suggests a confluence of Magritte and Eyvind Earle, with a touch of Arnold Böcklin thrown infor good measure. You will also find brushes with pointillism and, as you go back in time, more straightforward landscapes and still life, rendered with a similar approach.

Gordiets compositions often follow similar themes, with foreground gardens or rocky outcrops set against an expanse of water and distant, sun bleached cliffs. They evoke a stillness and sense of timelessness, a feeling accentuated by a technique that carries hints of Renaissance landscape, though with a much lighter palette (see my posts on Jean Fouquet and Giovanni Bellini).

His palette is often light in value but muted in color intensity; at other times the colors are preternaturally brilliant and outside the range of nature’s normal colorations; including trees with blue or purple crowns.

I can’t find an official site for the artist, but he is represented by several galleries. [Correction: there is an official site, it just didn’t show up in my initial search. I didn’t think to simply look for the artist’s name as the domain. Here is the official site: http://evgenigordiets.com, and the gallery page: http://evgenigordiets.com/art.html]

The landscapes of Bill Turner come with invitations.

Most of them follow a compositional motif of roads, often central to the image, inviting you to step onto the road and follow it into the landscape.

Turner lives and works in the Atlanta, Georgia area. His landscapes, painted in oil and acrylic, are softly rendered, at times more suggested than delineated, and frequently cloaked in soft mist or atmospheric haze.

They are usually painted with a narrow, carefully controlled palette. His compositions, however, are bold in terms of value and shapes, with large dark masses set against bright areas of hazy skies (a hazy sky is actually lighter in value than a sunny blue one).

His web site includes a multi-page gallery of paintings, as well as a selection of reproductions.

Turner started as a photographer, and continues to work in that medium, with may of his photographic compositions using the same compositional device of roads to lead your eye, and imagination, into the landscape.

I cam across Turner’s work obliquely, through an “ambient video” experiment by technology experimenter Doug Siefken and composer Tom Salvatori, in which Turner’s landscape “sewell barn” (image above, bottom) is used as the subject for a piece called The Road to Sewell’s Barn.

In it Salvatori’s painting has been digitally manipulated to an almost monochromatic state and is very gradually restored to full color (and perhaps “pushed” a bit beyond). The suggestion in this case is of dawn breaking. The changes happen so slowly as to be imperceptible, like a real dawn.