Jeff Pugh: Recent Paintings

Describing landscape as the unofficial art subject of Utah shouldn’t be taken as derisive—only indicative of the breadth and scope of artistic depiction of the state’s natural wonders. This “breadth and scope” can be quantified by the massive numbers of artists who use Utah itself as their subject, and qualified by the myriad innovative, diverse and exciting methods used. One distinctive approach to landscape comes from Jeff Pugh, who works in oil but never puts a brush to canvas.

Pugh’s landscapes, showing now at David Ericson Fine Art, have a characteristic style established by stark compositional choices and his use solely of the palette knife, creating short squared marks. Done repeatedly, this technique develops a graphic effect of Modernist-like reductionism, with larger areas of color sections rather than a more nuanced landscape. This effect enables a bold immediacy, resulting in something provocative for landscape—a near tactile connection between the viewer and the scene.

“Blue Roof Special” (pictured) facilitates such a connection with the viewer. Multicolored streaks of grass line the front, then one plane of grass with squared backs of black cows lead into the middle distance. A central row of grass is followed by another plane of grass toward a barn with a turquoise-blue roof. The mountainside is striped with a slightly darker shade of blue shadow against khaki. Graphic elements—streaks, the frontal plane, squared forms, the central row, the following plane, bold color, austere design—in combination bring the painting forward, and the eye in. (Ehren Clark)