Daniel Sosanya

Fall 2020

Blog post 14 

Visual Exhibit 

 

The piece from the Nassau Museum of Art’s Virtual Exhibit “Blue” that caught my eye the most because of the intensity of the blues was Huxley’s Guide to Switzerland, 2011. I know when I see christophers work because I’ve seen it before. Chris is an English contemporary artist. In addition to painting and drawing, both abstract and figurative, Winter also makes video and sculpture. His work interprets contemporary reality and reactions to modern life. He is an  enormously talented storyteller, and I mostly view his perspective work because it’s what he is mostly known for. I love the way he separates his blues into higher and lows so that the viewer can catch a better view of the perspective. The blue he uses is odd to me, I’ve never seen anyone get that type of blue so i was always wondering how he was able to go about it. After reading up on this specific piece of art I’ve found that he stated  “I start with Ultramarine or Cerulean (these two blues cannot be mixed from anything else but are like fathers to whole families of blues). Each parent blue can then be guided to new depths depending on whether you add them together or mix small amounts of green, black, white or purple to them.” That’s just beyond me. I can’t even tell you what 2 colors are next to one another on the color wheel.  He sees blue as soothing and occupies a huge part of his painting palette. Within this painting the central characters are floating in space above a lake in Switzerland but the way it’s done, it’s as if the main characters are falling into a river or maybe they are falling  through the sky ? one cannot be so sure. It’s as if he painted these characters while they were falling in mid air. It’s as if The force of gravity has been lost and they float through a blue sublime landscape. When I look at chris paintaints it’s as if he paints everything freely, I hope I didn’t confuse you. If i did i would rather say the characters are painted with a free spirit if that helps the image more. The painting was created by acrylic on canvas in the year 2011, with size. If I had to see Christopher myself and needed to ask him a question I would ask him how long this took. In my opinion I feel as if this must have taken about a week. I don’t paint personally so i can only imagine how long but it’s probably way faster. He’s a professionalÂ