David Blackburn’s “Pastels” at the Peter Bartlow Gallery are a feast for the eyes. Inspired by the landscapes of his native English countryside and his temporary Australian surroundings, Blackburn transforms horizontal fields and vertical trees and hills into rich, loosely tended landscapes.
While the 27 mixed media paintings exhibited borrow certain forms and composition ideas from artists such as David Hockney and Richard Diebenkorn, Blackburn’s offer a unique vision and power.
His sense of color — tantalizing blues, greens, roses, oranges and yellows — and how they can be manipulated, juxtaposed and accented — sparingly, with Franz Kline-like black strokes — is superb. His sense of space is unorthodox. He provides intimate views but often sets them within vast expanses.
Blackburn also magically uses pastel, among the more difficult-to-control media. Sometimes, when applied on textured paper, the pastel appears raw and rough. Sometimes, when the paper is smooth, it glides over the surface like an adept skater. And sometimes it is thinned so much that it masquerades as watercolor.
Blackburn occasionally scratches through the pastel to add depth, or injects crisp lines that suggest lightning bolts to surprise the viewer.
Most arresting is that within the genre of visionary landscape, Blackburn creates countless variations.
Strong geometric compositions like “North Yorkshire Landscape” consist of forceful vertical and horizontal bands that ooze color. Large spherical boulders inspired by his Australian sojourns read as enormous jeweled Faberge eggs. Collages made from magazine cutouts in these geometric compositions stand out within eerily empty reaches.
The strongest work exhibited presents still another route. In “Landscape Vision No. 13,” four to five times larger than other works on view, multiple images are arranged to suggest a giant puzzle. A grid of white painted wood strips that overlays the artwork simulates window mullions, a surprisingly realistic touch for an artist seeking to distance his world from the real one.
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David Blackburn’s pastels are at the Peter Bartlow Gallery, 44 E. Superior St., through April 30.