URBAN MYTHS I

Given how her blunt manner of laying down pigment builds on those distinctive strokes that the versally influential master evolved as building blocks of modern painting.

De la Torre Also shares qualities in common with Frank Aurbachand Leon Kossoff, two contemporary British painters who practically sculpt their paintings out of the thick oil impastos. Like them Alicia discovers and deconstructs her subject in the act of painting: Thick dark vertical strokes establish a sense of the tree line in a forest, only to be subordinated to areas of green and yellow that assert the density of the Foliage. Staccato horizontal burst of blue ,mediated by foamy bits of white, convey the sense of lake or pond winding through the lush landscape, yet this patches of color, too, are all but consumed by the crusty materiality of pigment, which activates the entire surface of the composition, obliging the viewer to seek the depth in the image.

It seems as thought she is attempting not so much to depict the landscape as to rebuild it by the cumulative application of the pigment, which finally achieves a reality of its own, quite apart from the subject matter.

It is a testament to Alicia De La Torre’s obsessive determination that most of her composition are quite similar, apart from slight variations in the placement of the patches of color from one canvas to the other. For it is not a variety or resemblances that she seeks but a synthesis of all landscapes in one indelible and immutable image.

And she succeeds splendidly in making the elusive qualities of nature come alive on the canvas.

Gallery & Studio Magazine Jane Morgenstern

The following images are from the exhibition of Alicia de la Torre. Additional art work from the exhibition. Contact Carole Jones for purchase of works at 917-686-8498 or e-mail atelierart@aol.com .