{"id":32401,"date":"2019-04-19T03:52:56","date_gmt":"2019-04-19T10:52:56","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/?p=32401"},"modified":"2019-04-17T19:47:47","modified_gmt":"2019-04-18T02:47:47","slug":"responding-to-the-landscape","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/2019\/04\/19\/responding-to-the-landscape\/","title":{"rendered":"Responding to the landscape"},"content":{"rendered":"

\u201cReView 2\u201d by Ian Penn.<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

Ian Penn is not a new name for regular visitors to the Zack Gallery, which has exhibited his work before. \u201cI like this gallery,\u201d Penn told the Independent<\/em>. \u201cIt\u2019s like a public marketplace. It\u2019s transparent and open. Children come in. Older people. People on the way from their lunch or the gym. The gallery is accessible, the way art should be. I could show at a traditional gallery, but I don\u2019t want to.\u201d<\/p>\n

Penn makes one exception to this statement \u2013 for his homeland, Australia. \u201cI have a gallery in Australia that represents me, and I exhibit there frequently, once or twice a year,\u201d he said. \u201cLast year, I was an artist-in-residence at that gallery. I gave artistic workshops to high school children. It was fun.\u201d<\/p>\n

His current exhibition at the Zack, From the Deck: View and ReView, is dedicated to landscapes, specifically the scenery he sees from the deck of his house: trees and mountains, water and clouds. Penn has painted these landmarks in different lights and different seasons. \u201cI tried to capture different moods,\u201d he said. \u201cSome are grand, panoramic. Others are smaller, more intimate.\u201d<\/p>\n

He explained his idea behind the show. \u201cView and re-view are two parts of the process. I look at the view from my house deck, have been looking at it for years. I enjoy the landscape from a single view. I take photographs. I sketch it multiple times. It\u2019s my immediate response to the landscape. I\u2019m part of it. I\u2019m mapping it. This is \u2018View,\u2019 but it is not the territory, just a map. It is my understanding of the place.\u201d<\/p>\n

Penn\u2019s View paintings are more abstract, sometimes just splashes of colour. What is important to the artist is that every element appears in the right size and shape in relation to the other elements. \u201cI measure all the distances at this stage and mark the proportions. How far is this treetop from that ship passing through? How large are these bushes compared to that shoreline? I make lots of drawings.\u201d<\/p>\n

The second part of the process, the review, is done in the studio, later. \u201cThis is the second part of my response,\u201d he explained. \u201cI\u2019d think: what is important in that idea? A \u2018ReView\u2019 is my emotional and physical answer to the \u2018View\u2019 and the landscape. It\u2019s all about the place itself, the place and the painting. At this stage, I\u2019m recreating the territory.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"photo<\/a>
Ian Penn at the opening of his latest solo exhibition at the Zack Gallery, which runs until April 28.\u00a0(photo by Olga Livshin)<\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Unlike the bold brush strokes of his Views, most of his ReViews are more detailed, while still exploring the same landscape. And the ratio of abstract versus figurative slants towards the figurative. \u201cI\u2019m interested where representation and abstraction interact,\u201d he admitted.<\/p>\n

In his ReViews, a tree becomes a more detailed tree, not just a blob of yellow, even while maintaining its impressionistic abstract profile. A ship becomes more identifiable as a ship, not simply a dark squiggle. And a cloud can\u2019t be mistaken for anything else.<\/p>\n

In fact, clouds play a huge role in most of the paintings on display: light and fluffy in one image, heavy and menacing in another. \u201cClouds change constantly; that\u2019s why they interest me. I\u2019m fascinated by change, by periods of transition,\u201d said Penn. \u201cThat\u2019s why most of these paintings are done in spring or autumn. Those are the seasons of change. In summer, the landscape is full and the sky is clear, but, with autumn, comes change. The colours of the leaves change. When the leaves fall, the shapes of the trees change. The bones of the landscapes are transformed. The weather changes. Same in spring. By exploring those changes, I\u2019m addressing the changes in our lives.\u201d<\/p>\n

By the juxtaposition of constant change within the same view \u2013 from one location \u2013 Penn follows in the footsteps of one of his favourite artists, Paul Cezanne. \u201cI studied Cezanne. He painted Mont Sainte-Victoire countless times, all different,\u201d Penn said. \u201cHe changed the landscape genre forever, took it apart and re-created it.\u201d<\/p>\n

Penn\u2019s investigation of the landscape as an art form goes further. \u201cA traditional landscape is horizontal, with certain set dimensions,\u201d he explained. \u201cI\u2019m challenging those dimensions, trying landscapes of different formats. A portrait shape. A diptych, which is much wider than a traditional landscape. I\u2019m playing with different geometry. What if the two parts of a diptych are of different widths: one square, another a wider rectangle? What if both parts are off-squares?\u201d<\/p>\n

Penn\u2019s experiments with the shapes of his paintings, with the changing of weather and seasons, makes the show diverse. The exhibition demonstrates the richness of landscape as an art form.<\/p>\n

\u201cLandscape as we know it is relatively new in the modern Western art,\u201d he said. \u201cBefore the Renaissance, landscape was mostly a background for figures in the composition. It only became a separate art form in the 16th and 17th centuries, after the paint tubes became small enough that artists could take them out of the studios, to paint on locations. That was what the Group of Seven did. That is what I do.\u201d<\/p>\n

Penn\u2019s show runs until April 28 at the Zack. For more information about his work, visit ianpenn.com<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/strong>Olga Livshin<\/strong> is a Vancouver freelance writer. She can be reached at olgagodim@gmail.com.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\u201cReView 2\u201d by Ian Penn. Ian Penn is not a new name for regular visitors to the Zack Gallery, which has exhibited his work before. \u201cI like this gallery,\u201d Penn told the Independent. \u201cIt\u2019s like a public marketplace. It\u2019s transparent and open. Children come in. Older people. People on the way from their lunch or […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":32402,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[989],"tags":[2466,4583,5517,6691,1742],"class_list":["post-32401","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-visual-arts","tag-art","tag-ian-penn","tag-landscape","tag-painting","tag-vancouver"],"blocksy_meta":{"styles_descriptor":{"styles":{"desktop":"","tablet":"","mobile":""},"google_fonts":[],"version":8}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32401","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=32401"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32401\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/32402"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=32401"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=32401"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=32401"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}