Toby Üpson reviews Lewis Brander: ‘Atmospheric touches were given in flax’
Lewis Brander’s solo exhibition reviewed by Toby Üpson for Garageland Magazine, with input from Estelle Renaud.
“Lewis Brander at Vardaxoglou Gallery, brings together a range of humble skyscapes - some of which gesture to some earthly place beneath - completed by the artist over the last two to three years. Bare of any frivolous neo- or classical referents, Brander’s skies arrive, in their close box frames, as gestural washes of pigment, as memory traces caressed into visible recollection by board, linen, flax. The earthly tone used in each scape do not describe nor define a place as such. Rather, these subtle swells of oil paint convey the artist's own recollection of times spent beneath and in awe of the blue through pink skies of Greece and London. Echoing the olive branches and TV antenna which frame that 'pure and wide [...] excavated, transparent, invisible' expanse, 'so blue' it evokes some sense of fearful sublimity, these two geographic masses provide the earthly hands that hold Brander’s memories, supporting their painterly life…”
