Spaceship Through the Blue study 2000

John Berkey made this painting, Spaceship Through the Blue study, with broad gestural strokes, and a futuristic color palette of blues, greys, and warm oranges, as if dreaming of space travel. I can imagine Berkey standing before the canvas, brush loaded, feeling the immensity of space—the weightlessness, the infinite possibilities. The blue almost vibrates, doesn’t it? It's like he's conjuring the vacuum of space itself. Then comes the spaceship: a streamlined form, captured in shades of grey, slicing through the blue. The paint looks almost sculpted, giving the ship a tangible, almost touchable quality. The planets, so round and serene, hang in the balance of the composition, as if in conversation with the spaceship, and also the painter. Berkey’s work reminds me of other painters interested in science fiction, and the idea that we can travel to other places, and other people. He has that sense of adventure and the idea of exploration.