site updated 11/29/23
Linda Hodges Gallery represents some of the finest modern landscape painters in the region—artists who frequently renew the genre with sensitivity and humor. Fred Holcomb’s work is squarely in that realm. His dreamy horizons play with depth and light beautifully. They are the sort of works one could easily fall into. In many of these new works, skillful blurring in the foreground or background instead makes one slide parallel or obliquely to the wall if one looks to the edges rather than the center. In all of the work, there is a sense of infinity, but with these landscapes in motion there is simultaneously a sense of urgency.
The work of G. Lewis Clevenger is an interesting contrast in the same space. Clevenger’s work is layered and graphic, the sort of work you peel back instead of fall into. Where Holcomb is smooth, Clevenger is scratchy. And the latter is more at play with the idea of brightness than light in the flattened, fractured surface of the canvas. It will be interesting to see both together, as they can be appreciated on their own, but the stark differences between the two may inspire a new appreciation peculiar to this show.
Works by Fred Holcomb and G. Lewis Clevenger will be on display through January 31 at Linda Hodges Gallery (316 1st Ave S).