John Virtue
Abstract landscape painter, John Virtue's works are regarded as a distincitive reinvention of the British landscape tradition.
The experience of landscape is a constant theme in the work of John Virtue (b.1947, Lancashire) and his highly acclaimed abstract paintings are regarded as a distinctive reinvention of the British landscape tradition. He will be exhibiting a new series of paintings inspired by the Exe Estuary at Exeter, which have been specially created for Tate St Ives. This dramatic series will include paintings over seven metres in length; the largest works Virtue has ever completed.
The Exe paintings, although monumental in scale, have their roots firmly in drawing. Every day Virtue takes the same walk down the Exe valley, recording in his sketchbooks his movement through the landscape, the changing atmosphere of the scenery and the passage of time. These sketches then provide the source material for his paintings, which are created in the studio. He uses a combination of knives, rags, rollers, buckets, his own hands as well as brushes. The gestural brushwork is combined with fine mists of paint spray and the contrasting areas of black shellac and white acrylic create an almost telescopic spatial effect. The paintings' looming shapes and their suggestion of an ambiguous deep space give them a distinctly sublime quality.
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