Phillips Gallery: Mark Knudsen and Leslie Thomas

Husband & wife artists Mark Knudsen and Leslie Thomas each make a bold aesthetic statement in their individual works. Each collection has the artistic merit to stand alone as a fine example of excellence in landscape painting. Yet shown together, they complement each other and say something even more monumental about landscape and its aesthetic possibilities.

Knudsen paints landscapes that are decidedly more aggressive in their bold, stark, frozen tonalities and elements. “Magpies At a Caineville Dusk” (pictured) exemplifies Knudsen’s landscape assertiveness when we look at the two magpies flying across the expanse. It is a shudderingly strong image, rendered briskly with ribbons of light and dark, bringing the mountain landscape abruptly to our senses. The magpies fly with a fullness of life, soaring freely—a superb contrast between the rigid land caught in time and life passing it by. Other works achieve the same sensibilities with telephone poles or a freeway sign in the foreground.

Thomas’ works—oil, where Knudsen’s are acrylic—are easy on the eye that glides over the silky, rocky structures, seen as glassy and sensual. Color and tonality stream together. As mountainous as these shapes are, and as rocky as the details render them, there is something fantastical about them—true to life, yet larger than life, created with a luxury ultimately lending them vitality. Where Knudsen’s formations are stark and pattered with form, Thomas’ are emotive and organic. (Ehren Clark)