Looking for Landscape

Looking for Landscape brings together works from the permanent collection that both embody the essence of a traditional landscape while challenging the viewers’ notion of traditional landscape depiction in their abstraction. The works are grouped to guide visitors through three central elements: colour, shape, and composition.

Sudbury experiences the full spectrum of seasons, and through each, the predominant colours of the environment change. The white of winter gives way to the first signs of green in spring, which in turn leads to the vibrant colours of summer followed by the warm tones of fall. The North wall of the gallery features works that play with colour to represent landscape in styles ranging from impressionist to minimalist.

Triangles, rectangles, and circles are building blocks the artists use to render more complex forms. The works displayed on the South wall all use shape and form to represent landscape but in different ways. From using layered shapes and forms to bold outlines and ultimately, using groupings of shapes to visually build up shadow and contours.

The East and West walls focus on composition in juxtaposing ways. On the West wall are three works that utilize colour and shape in traditional ways, but with abstracted techniques that differentiate them from works of high realism. Across the gallery on the Eastern wall is the largest work in the exhibition, “Top of the Mast” by Yolanda Van Dyck. This abstract work utilizes colour and line to evoke the essence of a landscape in its barest form, leaving the viewer to look out over the vast expanse as if looking through a large window out to the horizon.