Review of ‘From Where I Stand’ by John Fineran
However apt the title of this exhibition it can only do so much. Such is the prevailing mood of these works that the artist might be thought to actually inhabit some solitary, estuarine location beneath one of his vaulting skies.
There is a sense of both artist and viewer being enveloped in a fusion of the insubstantial and the geological; wind, vapour, spume, with groyne, mudflat, and cliff.
From the wind-seared, hill pastures of Parsley Hay to the crashing of the blue Pacific on Californian rocks, a narrative thread may be found within the expressive repertoire of fleck, drizzle, scumble and obliteration.
The clutch of four feet-square oils are the most compelling, save for one of the three larger works, ‘Oh! To be Cold and Lonely.’ Despite a reservation concerning trickle effects, its splendidly bravura sky and sinister, riverine shape attain symphonic scale.
It is at first tempting to regard the score of smaller oils and watercolours as sketches. They are, however, considerable statements in their own right. The one watercolour on gesso panel appeals greatly by virtue of the suppressed driftwood character of the ground and the judicious, near-calligraphic traces wrought upon it.
It is engaging to witness Noble’s progress; the painter revealing an ever-increasing sensibility in the melding of meteorology with the majesty of landscape and their celebratory representation.
