American Landscape: Mountain with Archaic Forms 1983

Ralph Rosenborg painted "American Landscape: Mountain with Archaic Forms" with what looks like oil paint, and a palette knife, creating a thick, almost cake-like surface. I love how the yellows and oranges dominate, but then your eye finds these little pockets of blues and greens nestled in the lower half. It's like he's conjuring a memory of a landscape rather than depicting it. Those impasto strokes, applied with such confidence, build up a real sense of texture, almost like the earth itself. You can practically feel the weight of the paint, the artist's hand pressing down. It reminds me a bit of Milton Avery, with that same simplified, almost childlike approach to form and color, but Rosenborg's got this wild energy, a real exuberance, that's all his own. It is like he is taking a journey, and inviting you to take one, too.