Tore Art Gallery, Tore, until 20 June 2011

INSPIRED by the landscape of Redcastle near Tore, Michael Stuart Green’s latest solo exhibition presents work in an extraordinary variety of media including drypoint etching, lino cut and woodcut prints, oils, watercolours, charcoal and graphite drawings and original digital prints.

At his best Michael Stuart Green combines his life’s experience as an artist and printmaker with digital technology to create images that are satisfyingly multi-layered, grounded in his understanding of traditional techniques and of composition. Redcastle Treetops (Original digital print 1/10) is an excellent example- a beautifully textural work in layers of orange, ochre, forest, fresh and lime green. Delicate stippled highlights feel as though they have been rendered with the lightest touch of a brush and this blending of techniques, the combination of human hand and technology is extremely interesting in the context of the whole show.

RC-TF 2

RC-TF2 (Original digital print 1/10) with its bold interlocking design and controlled palette of black, white and greys with a single band of russet in the foreground, strips the image back to its structural elements creating an exceptionally balanced composition. The landscape is reduced to pure geometry accented with elegant, organic curves; there is something almost Art Deco in the clarity of line, form and use of colour in this image. Shafts of light in the sky are particularly effective, conveying natural observation and inner feeling, heightened by the artist’s adept handling of semi abstract composition.

Sunlit Field, Redcastle

Both Redcastle Woods (Lino cut 1/5) and Sunlit Field, Redcastle (Woodcut 1/4) also utilise formal design and colour to create an incredible sense of natural light. The semi abstraction of Sunlit Field, Redcastle, bisected by diagonals of light and shade concentrated in the right hand corner of the image, create a feeling of brilliance and heat seen from shaded seclusion. The artist successfully limits his palette in a way that transforms the scene.

Fiery Field Redcastle (Wood cut 1/4) is another example, the sky in softened gradations of pink and white, contrasted with the intensity of hot oranges and pinks. The deliberation of marks characteristic of the woodcut process adds to the energy of the image, rendering the foliage and dry stone wall in a tangle of concentrated growth.

Terezin ( 4 Panel Polyptych Woodcut 1/3) gives a glimpse of the artist’s work in print media on a much larger scale, and as the only figurative work in the show is a curious addition. The text on the actual image “ Arbeit Macht Frei” and “Camp life described in the sketchbooks of children drawn there by their fate” is heavy handed and unnecessary. It is possible from the title, the grouping and treatment of the figures for the image to speak by itself.

Terezin

The design is powerful, compressing the striped prison garb into concertina zigzags and presenting a mass of youth and humanity in stark black and white. Use of woodcut strongly echoes German Expressionism and the inclusion of a child’s clown doll in the background like a passive onlooker adds to the potency of an image that does not require further explanation with written text.

There are blocks of exploration in different media throughout the exhibition including paintings and drawings on a larger scale. Adjacent to particularly beautiful and accomplished examples of lino cut and original digital prints by the artist, these sit a little uncomfortably. While experimentation and exploration of different media is admirable and can be a leading element in creating a dynamic new body of work, the inclusion of some of the larger watercolours and graphite/charcoal drawings in the exhibition weakens what could have been a truly outstanding visual statement.

In Redcastle Woods

As a solo exhibition creating a strong visual statement overall is desirable and if exploration of scale had been channelled into the print process further, informed by painting and drawing but not eclipsed by it in terms of prominence, the result might have been overwhelmingly dazzling. There is more life, depth and variety of mark in Stuart Green’s Redcastle snow scenes using the digital print process than there is in the adjacent watercolours which feel flat by comparison; the fluidity and immediacy of watercolour as a medium just doesn’t translate here, nor does it equal the print work.

Foreshore Redcastle 2 feels more like gouache than watercolour and while artists are certainly free to push media in whatever way they see fit, the contrast between blocks of work in different media in this show highlight both exceptional practice and that which borders on mediocrity.

The best works in this show are superbly crafted in full knowledge of all pictorial elements, creating an impressive balance between them, however greater scale and hanging space is given to paintings and drawings which ironically struggle to find their voice. The large scale drawings in graphite and charcoal are lost on canvas, the vitality of mark only seen in a temporary sheen of the right light as layers of mark are impacted on one another.

This surface effectively kills the vitality of the drawing and its tonality whilst other print works clearly display the artist’s hand as sensitive, dynamic and insightful. As a solo show the best work needs to be given room to breathe, both in terms of selection and framing. Although there is some wonderful work in this solo exhibition to be savoured, displaying the desire not to be artistically pigeonholed isn’t ultimately the strongest visual statement this artist could make.

© Georgina Coburn, 2011

Links

• Tore Art Gallery
• Michael Stuart Green