City Scape 

Editor: Here we have "City Scape," a painting by William Hawkins, though the date is unknown. The use of acrylic paint gives it a really striking, almost cartoonish vibrancy. I’m immediately drawn to how the artist flattens the perspective. What do you make of his artistic choices? Curator: Indeed, the simplification of form and vibrant palette are key. Notice how Hawkins reduces the urban landscape to its basic geometric components, primarily rectangles and lines. This is especially clear in the architecture where details are forsaken. Editor: It almost feels like he's created his own visual language for a city. Curator: Precisely. Reflect on how color is utilized. Hawkins opts for bold, unmodulated hues - strong reds, yellows, greens – which serves to further flatten the picture plane and disrupt any illusion of depth. This strategy results in an intense optical experience, doesn’t it? Editor: Definitely! I also noticed how the forms overlap somewhat randomly and without a real sense of recession, almost like collage. Curator: An astute observation. It is in these structural incongruities—the unconventional handling of space and the blatant disregard for representational accuracy—that Hawkins' artistic strategy emerges most forcefully. Would you say that this almost demands that we reassess our conventional understanding of ‘realism’ in painting? Editor: Absolutely. I hadn't considered how challenging his visual language really is! Curator: And what does this mean, if our perception is disrupted or changed? The point is, that careful attention to these basic pictorial strategies allows one entry into what at first glance seems to be a naive rendering of a cityscape. Editor: It really highlights how formal choices affect our reading of the image. Thanks!