Inspiration From Artists Wk 158 Bonus Artist . Morris Meredith Williams .

Another of those artists whose skill is very evident, yet somehow fails to provide, for me at least, that spark of interest.  The spark is an ephemeral thing, I see the excellent drawings yet quickly lose interest in them.  The art that provides this spark will vary for each of us.  I look at the work and expect to be inspired by the line drawings, on a personal level it's what most interests me, yet somehow I'm not.  Don't know why, I can't fault them.  So perhaps it's all down to me, and how I'm feeling. A fine artist.

Forgive me for reposting one of Paul's latest selection - the Flanders snow scene - but it did put me in mind of Pissaro's Route de Versailles (shown below the Flanders scene).   Taking that with Lew's comments about the ephemeral nature of interest, it does make you wonder why some artists achieve great success and others are consigned to be also rans.  I am thinking of the general unease that was evident with Gaugin's work when he was featured, and the difference between public and critics' views of Jack Vettriano.

My views are the same as Lewis’s - can appreciate the skill, but this artist’s work doesn’t hold any interest for me.

The first of Tony’s snow scenes, also posted by Paul, is a fine painting in many respects… perhaps it’s because I’m always drawn to snow scenes. It’s the palette that he’s used, and I like the main figure - and that’s about it from me on this artist!

I suppose one doesn't really look at paintings for their historical interest, and yet the agricultural scenes are from a world I just remember; and pictorially miss, though the hard work they reflect and the awful wages farm workers were paid go to show that a good painter can transform a scene, including one of war's grisly consequences, into something people want to look at: if that would be partly nostalgia, that's part of the historial perspective too; the thing not to do is to sentimentalize it.    I think more of this artist than some of you do - not sure why ... paintings either grab you or don't; I'd like to see much more of his work, and I take that as a positive sign.  The painting of solitary figures always says something to me - e.g. the soldier standing in the snow, the ruined building behind him, the tangle of rusted barbed wire to the front left, contrasts with the solitary farm worker - presumably -  in the painting three posts above it, beneath the castle painting (which I also like: I have a major weakness for castles, similar to Alan B's for snow scenes): what are they looking at, why are they there, what are they feeling about their situation?  They make me want to know - it's fairly unusual for figures in scenes to be standing there looking at you when they're not so much a portrait as figures in a wider landscape - you look beyond them at that landscape, and are then drawn back: at its worst, this is a technique which leads one to suspect the painting has been taken from a photograph, but I don't get that impression from these two paintings; I do get the feeling that someone is looking at me,  from a zone of time far removed... But I shall stop speculating about all that, for fear of straying into territory the late Dame Edna Everage would describe as "spooky".