Josh Elliott | Show Preview
/Southwest Art
By Elizabeth L. Delaney
Montana artist Josh Elliott debuts his new exhibition, titled Hush, at Claggett/Rey Gallery in Edwards, Colorado, on Friday, March 6. Hush includes more than a dozen new paintings that demonstrate an intense exploration of the intricate winter landscapes that excite Elliott visually and intellectually.
“Hush” | 40×40″ | Oil
After extensive travels throughout his home state as well as Idaho, Wyoming, New Mexico and other snowy climates, Elliott has built a reference library of photographs and plein air sketches, many of which informed the pieces in this show. Additionally, he has been inspired by the techniques and processes of other artists working in similar environments, including Scandinavian painters Gustaf Fjæstad and Ferdinand Hodler, Austrian artist Egon Schiele, and Elliott’s father, Steve, the renowned wildlife painter.
This exhibition marks Elliott’s first foray into painting a collection based on a theme. The artist has long been fascinated with the winter landscape in its varying forms, and these works reflect a focused approach to capturing the magic of the subject matter with a combination of realism and abstraction.
“Traveler” | 15×35″ | Oil
By paring down his compositions to tightly cropped vignettes of icy creeks, snow-covered rocks, hardy evergreens and the like, Elliott can render the naturalistic beauty of the subject at hand while also energizing its formal components. “My motivation for each work is purely visual,” he says, and he brings that to life via the interaction of light and dark, a combination of vivid and subdued colors, and a wide range of textures and brushstrokes.
The intimate compositions also allow Elliott to highlight the abstract qualities of the objects. Through a reduction in detail minimal enough to preserve a representational interpretation, the artist transcends what the pigment and marks represent to celebrate the materials and mark making themselves.
HUSH, the show’s namesake painting, explores the multiple, often elusive hues that develop throughout water as it freezes. With agile yet playful brushstrokes, Elliott reveals the yellows, blues and greens found within a world of white. “I enjoy painting snow, the subtleties of it, and the color harmonies it presents by the nature of it being more monochromatic,” explains Elliott. The result is a quiet, placid scene that invites the viewer inside to discover its many facets.
“Hopscotch” | 16×16″ | Oil
Exemplifying the variations in both the winter landscape and Elliott’s technique, the painting HOPSCOTCH illuminates the panoply of colors comprising a snowy riverscape. Here, Elliott envisions a kaleidoscope of robust, saturated warm and cool hues that move across the picture plane at once as unified image and individual lines, shapes and colors. This effect demonstrates Elliott’s interest in the materials and marks as well as the creation of a composition that engages viewers on macro and micro levels. “I like my paintings to have a visual impact from across the room, but I also want to reward the viewer if they go up to get a closer look,” he says.
Just as the paintings in Hush have allowed Elliott to fully explore the winter landscape and its vast complexities, he is excited to share his creative vision and connect viewers with the aesthetic and formal intricacies of the natural world. “I think that’s our job as artists, to share our vision,” he says.
The exhibition is on view through April 10.