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“Martin Timko’s Gestural Grasp Of Nature”
Paradoxical as it may seem, an artist can often get closer to landscape by sidestepping literal depiction and casting a wider net to capture nature’s elusive spirit. This is a truth that the ancient Chinese scroll painters knew many centuries ago, and a splendid contemporary example of the approach can be seen in the recent paintings of Martin Timko, at Jadite Galleries, 415 West 50th Street, from May 2 through 16.
In Timko’s last show in the same space, “The Forgotten View,” his paintings were smaller, more realistic, and based on actual scenes or memories. In his latest canvases, however, Timko has rediscovered his roots in Abstract Expressionism, working gesturally on a grander scale to evoke the awesome beauty of natural forces, suggesting the raw violence of nature in dynamically rhythmic compositions.
“Night Voices” is a powerful monochromatic painting that evokes nocturnal mystery with dripped rivulets of grey running down a black ground, above mountainous central forms, modeled in frosty white impastos. Here, Timko evokes the great melancholy mystery of night in the wilderness through his subtle, ever deepening gradations of grey that ultimately engulf the composition, turning it into an exquisitely somber tone poem.
A striking contrast is provided by “Avenging Nature,” in which slashing strokes of dark crimson, white, and grey descend diagonally upon a vertiginously slanted horizon. “Avenging Nature” suggests the sudden sneak attack of a violent summer storm.
Even more coloristically charged, Timko’s “Sunrise” is a fiery explosion of orange, yellow, and red. Here again, a slanted horizon line creates a dizzying effect that adds to the jolting impact of the painting.
Timko has mastered the entire vocabulary of drips and splashes that make gestural painting a vital counterpart to natural phenomena, producing a stunning sense of velocity, of energy and power. At the same time his sense of light, especially in the aforementioned “Sunrise,” is transcendent, Turneresque- which lends these paintings a certain poetry, as well.
For Martin Timko, art and nature have become interchangeable.
-Howard Farber, ARTspeak, May, 1992, NYC, New York.
(reproduction, “Sunrise”) |
