Lesley Anne Spowart "Untitled" Oil on Canvas, Expressionist Landscape Painting in Olive Green and Gold, Carmel California Art, Statement Artwork, 2023

Details

Description

A long bank of near-black trees, their trunks stitched in a tight row along the base, crowns the curve of … Read more A long bank of near-black trees, their trunks stitched in a tight row along the base, crowns the curve of an olive and ochre field beneath a pale, drifting sky. Rust and umber streaks run through the grass, and a small raised, ridged form stands alone on the right, thicker than the paint around it. The brushwork is loose and horizontal, dragged so the gold glows through the green. Landscape is one of Spowart's three bodies of work beside her animals and abstractions, and her feeling for layered, scraped surface and strong color carries over into oil. The trees read as a single dark mass, almost a weather system.

Wide and quiet, it gives a living room, dining room or study a sense of open air. The olive and gold sit well with cream sofas, tan leather, cognac and natural wood, while the charcoal trees echo black metal lamps and frames. Over a sofa, a console or a bed, it benefits from a little open wall on either side so the horizon has room to breathe.

Oil on canvas, 30 x 24 x 1.5 in (76.2 x 61 x 3.8 cm). Unframed.

Lesley Anne Spowart is best known for her mixed media and acrylic work, and here she turns to oil, building a landscape in loose, dragged brushwork over a layered, scraped surface. The dark mass of trees and the textured field show the same hand that sands, scratches and layers her other work. She works in a Monterey studio housed in a retired wine cellar.

Lesley Anne Spowart grew up on Cape Cod, Massachusetts, and earned a B.A. in Art History from the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, before graduate study at UC Davis, UC Riverside and Cal State Fullerton, where she studied museum practice and exhibition design. As a student she helped install works by artists including Sol LeWitt, Beatrice Wood and Viola Frey. She lives in Monterey, California, where she and her husband raised three children.

A self-described colorist, she works in beeswax, tar, photographic xerography, acrylic and collage, painting abstractions, landscapes and animals in a studio set in a retired wine cellar. She has exhibited widely on the Monterey Peninsula and nationally, including at the Monterey Museum of Art, and her work is held in collections including Community Hospital of the Monterey Peninsula and Salinas Valley Memorial Hospital. She was voted Best Local Artist by the Monterey County Weekly in 2010. See less