Monday, April 16th, 2001

Irish  Examiner 39

THEGUIDETHEGUIDE

Landscapes are a genial celebration of the outdoors

Preview 
Alannah  Hopkin 

SARAH  WALKER'S  new work at Fenton Gallery, Cork, (until April 25). is enormously enjoyable to look at. The artist describes her interest  in "zooming in and out of the landscape" in a catalogue note, and this is exactly what happens in her paintings.

At first it seems as if the gallery is hung with calm, minimal abstracts in intense and unusual colours. But a closer look reveals that these are in fact landscapes of a very unusual kind. Sea Pinks, for example is a large oil on canvas featuring a flat, velvety surface, painted the same colour as sea-pinks, a pale purply-pink. Near the bottom left hand comer, painted in heavy relief, is a meticulously observed patch of sea pinks in close-up. Other compositions, like Bluebells and Coill Bheag use a horizon to give added depth and sense of scale.

Walker's paintings record the seasonal changes of colour on Beara, where she lives. In recent exhibitions, the .West Cork work was primarily small square canvases, painted in multiple sets, featuring high relief paintings of native flowers or fruits m random patterns.

One of the nine paintings entitled Gorse, from this phase, can be seen in the vault. Gorse is represented as a series of raised spiky paint marks on a gorse green background, its very monotony having a meditative effect, isolating the essence of "gorseness". The new, larger works, Uke Bog Pool and Silver Ragwort, which include both the small picture, and the larger perspective represent a major step forward.

The series of studies in oil on paper, also in the vault, work like miniature versions of the much larger oils on canvas, and are just as effective, on a much smaller scale. Sheep Caught in Headlamp, a medium-sized (60cm by 60cm) oil on canvas, reveals Walker's witty side. Ploughing the Field is another good-humoured work, in which a tiny bright red tractor works it way diagonally across the canvas through rich earthy browns.

Most enjoyable of all is the sense of contrasting distance and close- up in these paintings - zooming in and out. It is strange how accurately Walker's highly idiosyncratic approach reflects her close observation of nature. This genial and stimulating show will send you back out into the landscape, keen to celebrate the arrival of spring.