Landscapes — oil painting by Ray Patrick
Eighteen small oil panels of the desert southwest laid out together on a table — mesas and buttes, Joshua trees, saguaro, flowering flats and three sunsets.
The panels are ranked in three columns running away from the viewer and read as a series. Almost every one is built on the same armature: a level horizon set low, a sky taking the upper half, and the incident placed off the centre line.
The run is dominated by turquoise and jade — skies that are green at the zenith rather than blue — over ground in coral, rust and violet. Three panels break into cadmium orange and scarlet and stand out from the rest because of it.
Thick and square throughout, each plane one loaded stroke left as it landed, with the foregrounds stabbed in short upright flicks. Seen as a group the method is identical in all eighteen; only the hour of the day changes.
Oil on canvas board, eighteen panels, the edges painted white. A studio photograph of a group of works rather than a single picture.
No signature legible at this scale.