| Description |
While Michael Porter may perhaps be better known for his large paintings and collages in acrylic and oil, he has for a long time also painted small gouaches on paper, sometimes in the evenings after a day in the studio. These gouaches may be small in size, but they are not small in ambition or realization: indeed they might be linked with a tradition of small masterworks in English art, especially the landscapes in water-colour by such artists as Cozens, Turner, Palmer, Ruskin and Sutherland. However, more than two centuries have elapsed since the blot technique of Alexander Cozens and teh innovations of other artists have contributed to Porters working process. His paintings would be unthinkable without the precendent of an artist such as Pollock, for example who treated the canvas as the flat surface it really is, and who in his own way respected truth to materials. Thus Porter renders a sophisticated reality in which paint is both itself and the catalyst for a deeper perception of certain aspects of nature. |