Work of the Week: Dark Trees

6 May 2016

Our work of the week is ‘Dark Trees’ by Alfred Wallis which is currently on display in ‘The horizon is the point of no return: works by Georgie Grace and from the Kettle’s Yard collection’ at Cambridge University Library. Grace selected works from the collection by Wallis, Hepworth and others to go alongside her lenticular prints (prints which change as the viewer moves past them). Georgie says:

“I chose these works because I felt they share a kinship with the themes and effects of the lenticular prints. They have a feeling of unease, a dangerous time or uncertain position, a sense of otherworldliness and shifting perspective.”

Wallis is best known for his paintings of ships at sea, and his paintings of the land are less frequent and often rather peculiar, showing houses and fields as if stacked up and seen from above or filled with gigantic trees as in ‘Dark Trees’. Wallis used very few colours, and the painting uses many of the colours one associates with him: dark browns, greys, whites and green.