Anne James visits an exhibition of landscapes and travels in them

This exhibition explores jour-neys inspired by landscapes, journeys that transcend mundane representation. Phil Whiting’s work, in the main, features forests, primordial, primitive places that by their nature provide uncompromising habitats, which can provide sanctuary, some temporary safety, a means of escape or, more often, extreme danger.

Since the early 1990s he has worked and painted in conflict zones, his paintings influenced by the testimony of survivors and of perpetrators. The First Snow of Winter: Let Us Stay Here and Rest Awhile, makes strong reference to Bosnia’s Srebrenica massacre, the complex sinister trunks and branches to the fore of the piece carry connotations of entrapment and fencing, beyond which, to the bottom left of the piece, is an optimistic warm red glow, while an aspirational white pathway works its way to the centre top of the piece, with snows and blizzards drifting across the whole.

Wildwood II is set on the edge of a forest, each tree possessing its own character, personality and savvy, each almost conversational with the others, against a dark background that coaxes and beckons, issuing stark warnings.

Whiting sketches (rapidly) in situ and then uses those sketches back in the studio to create the finished work. He works in a mixture of PVA, inks and acrylics on very heavy fabricated paper using water to blend his media and an approach that involves much scraping back.

He tries to start with a blank mind and then builds each piece until his journey through the whole process is resolved. He describes the process as ‘very physical’.

The sophistication and sheer beauty of his work is testified to by the commissions he has received from galleries and governments and the number of international peacekeepers who have bought works for their own collections.

Whiting is passionate about human rights and how they are denied, including to many children. He would welcome the opportunity to explore these issues with our local school and university students.

By contrast to Whiting, a very well established artist, Peter Kettle has been painting full-time for only two years. Now in his late twenties he too is a landscape painter and, like Whiting, he sees the landscape as secondary to the journeys that he, his subject matter and his audience make as a result of the piece.

His work to date has drawn in particular from the Welsh landscape and that of North Devon. In Aberthaw he captures both land and sky, melding one into the other: an abstract and impassionate portrait of both. And Avon River After Avon Gorge, one of two pieces with the same title, each drawn from a walk Kettle took along the Avon’s banks and through the extraordinary range of topography it embraces. Each of his walks, on which his work is based, can last three to four days making sketches, sketches he then takes back to his studio to create the final pieces.

He cites as his inspirations William Turner, L S Lowry and, in particular, Anselm Kiefer and the latter’s use of innovative techniques: techniques Kettle employs to capture, for example, the nature of ice, snow and cold. Kettle will use sticks he has picked up walking, or rags and boards to spread paint, and incorporate plaster when appropriate. He also turns canvases through 90 or 180 degrees to allow his materials to contribute movement and momentum to the piece.

The combined body of the work of these two artists makes for a truly fabulous exhibition. Both artists are consummately involved in their landscapes, both create emotional and metaphysical dimensions that transcend time and place, capturing the complexity of the human journey and our interface with the landscape. And for both the landscape remains an impartial place, redolent with its own agenda, and seemingly unaware of any intrusion, or of the human condition.

Phil Whiting In Memory of the Forest, with new paintings by Peter Kettle
* Sarah Wiseman Gallery, Summertown
* Until January 31