We Appreciate Summer Pleasures 

Curator: Nigel Van Wieck’s piece is an oil painting, the title of which is "We Appreciate Summer Pleasures.” What’s catching your eye about this beach scene? Editor: Well, the starkness of it. Not necessarily bleak, but there's a distance... that long dark row of something behind the figures throws a chill in the air. Is that intentional I wonder. Curator: I think part of what's happening is that Van Wieck’s capturing of the beach isn’t idealized; this isn’t postcard art. The material reality is more about human interaction, about genre-painting on the shore. We have people coexisting, the very modern pastime of leisure, but set against architecture. Editor: Right, there's a stillness that isn't just relaxing, you know? Look how separate those people are under the umbrella, each absorbed. And this isn’t a photograph; the texture of oil and maybe the open-air method emphasizes the constructed view we're being given. A curated leisure perhaps! Curator: Good point! It prompts a question, doesn't it? Is he appreciating summer pleasures ironically, or merely laying bare the mechanics of their staging? Editor: It’s like, are "We Appreciate Summer Pleasures" genuinely appreciative or just stating the obvious. I am reminded of those stark social paintings by Edward Hopper for some reason... Curator: Indeed! If we look closely at the details of execution—how Van Wieck balances that sharp horizon line, those thick clouds, or even the rather basic manufacture of the umbrella itself, then you begin to grasp the entire process that constitutes such an image. Editor: True! It's funny how you notice it—it is more than meets the eye at first glance... all of us enacting small pleasures under this giant, indifferent sky. It’s got a lot of bite.