This week’s featured artist is Richard Hearns, a painter from Dublin, Ireland. Richard’s style of painting combines a rather minimalist approach to landscapes (by simplifying shapes and avoiding details) with expressive textures and brushstrokes.
As you can imagine, this makes for some very intriguing works of art. The following paintings are just a few of Richard’s more expressive pieces, and ones that I found especially captivating.
Peat Stacks and Mountains, below, offers a wonderful contrast between the foreground “mountains” of peat and the distant mountains of earth.
I love the bold colors up front (which really serve to anchor the painting and give a sense of depth) as well as the luminous clouds above, full of purples, pinks, and blues.
You’ll also notice that in most of Richard’s paintings he’s used some sort of textured underpainting that shows through in the finished piece. This technique gives his paintings an impasto feel no matter how thinly he paints colors over the top.
His ability to create visual depth is amazing as well. Take this next painting for example, simply entitled Field.
That field of vertical brushstrokes acts as an incredibly strong directional indicator for the human eye. Every time I look at this piece I’m pulled back to that far-off horizon line where dark green trees stand clearly visible against a white backdrop of clouds.
It’s a gutsy move to cover 2/3rds of a painting with expressive, raw, brushstrokes like those, but Richard pulls it off.
Compare the powerful movement in that painting to the calm stability of Bog Field, below, and you’ll start to get a sense of the control he has over his chosen medium.
To see more of Richard Hearns’ paintings, please take a moment to visit his website at RichardHearns.com and click on the “works” tab at the top. There’s a lot there, and if you liked these paintings you’ll definitely want to check it out.