Alex Colville (1920-2013)
Alex Colville's body of work has a unique quality that places the viewer into a state of nostalgia for an era they never knew; until they did. Reviews throughout Colville's career cited a feeling of nostalgia and melancholy, even if the viewer didn't recognize the setting. Modern comparisons of Colville's painting style to early video game graphics- think 90s Play Station- mean that for a generation much later than Alex Colville’s, the style triggers real nostalgia for the feelings of being a child playing your favorite game. Born in 1920 and painting until the mid-2000s, Colville's point of view remained consistent throughout his time as an artist.
Colville used a Renaissance-inspired version of flattened pointillism[01] dictated by deliberate geometric construction of the compositions. His photography advised the composition of most of his pieces- parts of a future whole were collected over time, to potentially be combined with one another and components of Colville’s imagination to create scenes. He considered himself a “conceptual artist” of a different meaning than the term is generally used- Colville’s definition of it considers painting a form of thought.
The geometric construction mentioned above was often based on the golden section[02]- Colville would map this out extensively prior to beginning a painting.This framework he prioritized was the foundation to manipulating the elements of his paintings in a way that risks unnerving the viewer. All of his choices were deliberate, made with extensive thought and prior exploration; Colville even chose to paint on Masonite or wooden panels to prevent cracking of the paint in the future. Alex Colville is represented well by his work- meticulous, thoughtful, structured, intentional.
Reviews of Colville's work from the 1960s and for the rest of the century all mention key points: consistency in color and brushwork, tension, mystery, and most of all repeat mentions of Colville's unique ability to offer a window into the psychological landscape of Canadians in particular. It is a body of work that does in fact say so much more than words could- a bulletproof conveyor of a singular, unnerving feeling that we aren’t equipped to describe entirely. For myself, it triggers the same response I find in liminal spaces.
