However simple in their semiotic parallels between art and life, these techniques are powerful, and hold the viewer’s attention throughout the exhibition. This is also seen in a change of medium, from gouache to a mix of crayon and ink that display a thickened obscurity to the picture space. There is ample space to contemplate each painting, and the display case that shows three of Sutherland’s sketchbooks make a nice addition to the show, as the visitor can match an initial sketch to the finished painting.Ĭertain elements of the exhibition are easy to read: the colour juxtapositions of the pre, mid, and post war paintings are evident in their respective depiction of calmness, darkness and a renewed positivity of life. “it seems he always has something else to say, but never quite does”. He refreshes an interest in Sutherland’s practice, and gives the viewer a space to contemplate Shaw’s thought that Shaw clearly sees merit in Sutherland’s work, aligning him with the old Masters such as Constable and Van Gogh. Interestingly, the anticipation of odd juxtapositions and positioning of artworks in an artist-curated show is missing. Shaw’s interest in landscapes personal to him, rendered in all their painterly mimesis, won Shaw his Turner Prize nomination this year. It comes as no surprise that Shaw admires and is inspired by Sutherland. In a short film in the gallery’s basement, Shaw explains his interest in Sutherland’s painting, of the obsessive reworking of a familiar landscape. This exhibition at Modern Art Oxford brings together 85 of Sutherland’s lesser known works which are given a contemporary jolt by the artist-curator George Shaw. As a doctor would a patient, Sutherland examines every possibility and change through the medium of painting, and produced a vast collection of works on paper that scrutinise, explore and spiritualise the landscape he sees before him. He is a modernist painter who stands on his own two feet: moving away from the traditional representation of landscapes, however formerly innovative, treating the paper and the relief as a live entity. He was commissioned to paint scenes of bomb devastation, as well as work in mines, quarries and foundries. Graham Sutherland (1903-1980) was an official World War II artist from 1941-44.
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