Archipelago series 2020

Nick Alm made this painting, part of his Archipelago series, using watercolor. You can see how he’s letting the medium do its thing. It's like he sets up the situation, and then watches how the colors mingle and settle. There’s a real physicality to how the pigments create the landscape. The way the grays and whites bleed into each other gives the rocks a kind of spongy texture. It’s as if Alm is less concerned with depicting a specific place and more interested in capturing the feeling of being in a landscape, the weight of the earth, the cool air. The figure walking into the landscape helps to further the illusion of depth and also the sense of scale. This piece reminds me of Gerhard Richter's landscapes, not in style, but in the way that both artists use the act of painting to explore how we see and experience the world around us. Art is about embracing ambiguity, isn't it?