Sentinel

Tom Down, 2019

Oil on linen

Size: W28 x H35

Sentinel, referencing Norwegian painter Hermann August Cappelen, was one of the works featured in the solo exhibition, Hinterlands, at the 2020 London Art Fair Art Projects where Tom received critical acclaim as one of the top talents to watch.

Tom works predominately on a small scale, extracting and focusing on key elements of the traditional Romantic landscape; a lone tree, a pile of rocks, a patch of ground. Based on iconic works of 19th century European and North American Painters Friedrich, Calame, Cappelen, and Bierdstadt amongst them, he re-creates the landscapes as a series of lo-fi maquettes built in the studio. These crude facsimiles are made quickly from polystyrene, cardboard, glue and paint. Joyously revelling in every torn edge, rough surface, and crooked joint, these models act as a playful simulacrum of the original landscape paintings, themselves a semi-fiction, the artist’s own meticulously constructed vision of the locations on which they are based. These tableaus are then realistically rendered in oil paint, subtly with little overt gesture, at a near one-to-one scale with the physical models. Highly finished, using traditional techniques, at a glance they are once recognisable as a traditional landscape, but on further scrutiny that reading begins to break apart around the edges. A bank of snow comes into focus as a sheet of packing foam, a hazy sky recognised as a loosely hung sheet, blobs of plasticine revealing themselves beneath branches; quiet acts of defiance against the spectacular and the sublime.

Other works by Tom Down:

Sage oil on linen Dolmen Oil on Linen

About the artist

Reference : D10009

Price and order

£1,200.00

Quantity :

More info
we have also...
Comments (0)

Artist: Tom Down

Tom Down is the 2018 winner of the Jackson’s Open Painting Prize and was in the shortlisted exhibitions for the 2019 Lynn Painter-Stainers Prize and the 2018 John Moores Painting Prize. Originally from Birmingham, Tom studied at Wimbledon College of Art and now lives and works in London.

Tom aims to open up a dialogue exploring the gaps between our perception and the reality of these archetypal places. Repeatedly we see variations of these ideal landscapes, constantly bombarded through film, television, video games, advertising, and social media. Through his own multi-layered approach to creating a work, he calls into question how we view such images, and the various modes of transmission, replication, and alteration they are now subject to. His process utilizes all these stages, aiming to investigate the manner in which we currently consume visual culture, and also acting as a commentary on the artifice of painting itself.

No customer comments for the moment.

Only registered users can post a new comment.