100x120cm
Acrylic on Canvas
©2023
SOLD 🔴
’The horizon rises abruptly on the left – the contours of the landscape below echo this line for a time before taking on their own distinct character of a tumbling, hacked-out glacial landscape of warmer tones. I use the word ‘contour’ also in its cartographic sense i.e. a line joining points of equal elevation, as I sometimes think of Esther’s paintings as aerial views. There is much adding and layering of paint, but also much scraping away and removing with knives, spatulas and potter’s tools, a repeated play of revealing, then obfuscating again. The paintings move towards you and away from you, visually but also temporally. The evolution that takes place on the canvas is left pretty much intact for you to see its making. However, the process is not linear; it is often difficult to tell in what order the layers of paint have been applied. If you think you have figured it out, an exception will throw you. In many of her works there is a reining in at the end, a sense on the part of the artist of knowing when something is sufficient and balanced. In Comets and Contortions this takes place across the upper area of the canvas, when a ‘horizon’ is formed by the addition of impastoed strokes that act to contain the action happening underneath. But even then, there is more to see – that richness still shimmers below, gone but not forgotten.’
Jonathan Brennan
May 2023
