One of my favorite contemporary painters is Wayne Thiebaud, a West Coast based painter known primarily for his paintings of confections, often in multiples. Things like cakes, pies, suckers, sundaes and so on. Those are the type of paintings that are his signature work and that first introduced me to his work but, while I liked that work, it was his landscapes that made me a fan.
His landscapes are often from an aerial perspective which gives them an abstract quality especially given his use of clean, bright colors. I think it is his use of color that most draws me. In print, you can’t see the texture of his work which is characterized by heavy, beautifully applied strokes. That is what stands out most in mind from seeing his work in person. A beautiful tactile look. I wanted to run my fingers over it.
