Art review
Finding new ways to look at nature
In his impressive show at the Jewish
Community Center’s Fromm Gallery, painter Rich Houck sees the world
with a unique perspective, suggesting a postmodern sensibility with a
touch of the surreal.
By Ron Schira Reading Eagle Correspondent Contact Ron Schira at entertainment@readingeagle.com.
One
might conjecture that the popularity of landscape painting in
Pennsylvania is because the land configurations are so diverse that
they offer artists endless compositions from which to work. I am
convinced there must be some truth to this. Artists will always paint
what they see, and if you were born in Pennsylvania you will see hills
and trees and water.
One such artist
is Rich Houck, a Reading-based painter whose latest work — an
exhibition of landscape paintings entitled “The Spring and Autumn
Series: Paintings by Rich Houck” — is on display in the Fromm Gallery
of the Jewish Community Center of Reading through Oct. 29. Houck
maintains Studio 312 in the Goggle-Works Center for the Arts and is a
new breed of nature artist attempting to find unsullied and stimulating
ways of experiencing nature.
He paints
abstractly with both oil and acrylic and utilizes nearby flora and
fauna as his primary sources of inspiration. However like nature,
infinite variability is possible, and the ways Houck approaches his
subjects take in more than a little bit of process, which smacks of a
postmodern ethic.
What that means is
that the artist is looking for ways to paint the landscape without
actually representing it; no academia, no reliance on pre-established
systems of duplication. He is more involved with creating a common
experience of nature rather than a look-alike, and he does this by
allowing himself to fixate on the visual anomalies of light,
perspective, color and the physical properties of the paint.
Say,
for instance, a painting called “Leaves #1” shows multiple perspectives
of a forest, with the strongest point of view gazing up from the forest
floor. A suggestion of tree branches and leafy foliage seamlessly bend
around the perimeter of the rectangular canvas and arabesque into
jaunty little curlicues of deep green blurred into submission by a
contrasting cyan that subtly becomes a dislocated vision of the sky
through the forest canopy.
It is as if
one looks past what is actually seen but takes in both, semi-distinct,
their field of focus just slightly above the tree tops.
This
painting and others, most of which are untitled and slightly larger
than average, causes a juxtaposition of visions that separates what the
viewer sees into two or more contrasting entities — or shapes. One
untitled work angles down and punctuates a jumble of leaves against a
deep blue sky that is reflected in what may or may not be puddled
grooves in mud.
Another displays wild
marigolds against a lyrical pattern of pink and white. Yet another
shows silhouetted black fern shapes against a blazing orange
background.
Houck enjoys long walks
with his camera and takes numerous shots of anything that captures his
attention. Lately, he is painting double or overlapping images. One
image in the show is a smaller diptych that joins together to form a
darkish arch of different colors on a blue field. Superimposed are a
group of black shapes that, if pushed a little off focus, mysteriously
illustrate a forest at night.
Some of
this type of viewing technique is reminiscent of Salvador Dali’s
paranoiac critical manner of twisting the content by playing with
visual subconscious associations. Houck seems to be injecting a small
amount of surrealism into the genre, but it remains totally visceral,
eschewing all that Freudian mumbo-jumbo.
All
the evidence of his brushwork is increasingly obvious as well, since
the artist’s newest work employs numerous chromatic glazes and
transparent overlays, resorting to just plain good painting and
abstract design.
Houck paints what he
sees but tempers it with an innovative, thinking point of view. And it
would appear sometimes that beauty is fleeting; it has to find you
instead. In his search for the contemporary landscape, he seeks out
those moments of beauty with a sharp eye — what one may see when he is
not looking for it. Photo provided by Rich Houck Rich Houck’s “Leaves #1”: looking past what is seen.
