'James Winn: New Paintings' at Tory Folliard Gallery

×

Expand

Courtesy of Tory Folliard Gallery.

Top: FARM LANE, Acrylic on Paper, image 28 x 72" framed 37 x 80 1/2" Bottom: SPRING LAKE NO. 7, Acrylic on Panel, image 29 x 96" framed 31 x 98"

This land is your land. This land is my land.

From California to the New York island

From the red wood forest to the Gulf Stream waters

This land was made for you and Me.

Woody Guthrie was right that this land is your land and my land. However, before the days of inexpensive and safe high speed travel, most Americans stayed put and never personally experienced the geographical wealth our land has to offer.

Given the vastness and variety of America’s landmass, before photography and television the populace was dependent on artists to enlighten them about what their country looked like. But the best of landscape painting doesn’t content itself with simply representing mute nature – it’s most gifted practitioners are able to impart something of the spirit of a place, the emotions that a sensitive spectator would experience were they there. For example, Caspar David Friedrich canvases encapsulate the experience of nature associated with 19th century German Romanticism.

Contemporary American landscape painter James Winn continues this tradition. As a student of Luminism, an American landscape painting movement of the 1850s-'70s, Winn’s work is characterized by an expert rendering of light and its emotional interaction with the locales depicted. Winn also paints a wide variety of landscapes, including urban settings such as Milwaukee’s Public Library and City Hall in addition to the more traditional lakes and valleys. With the assistance of the Tory Folliard Gallery, James Winn has just unveiled a bundle of new paintings for an exhibition appropriately entitled “James Winn: New Paintings”. The works are on display until April 11.