The Analysis of Howard Arkleys Painting

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2A VISUAL ARTS ~ ART APPRECIATION Kate Rumney 1-Howard Arkley’s oil on canvas painting completed in 1994 depicts a stylized scene of our modern society and the influence mankind has over the world. Arkley has created an abstract piece with unrealistic coloring to show the forever changing land we live on with the buildings we have created on top of the environment we are destroying. 2- The painting shows a stylized view of the Cahill Expressway tunnel and approach road, with a single man shown at the side of the image. The painting shows the alienation many feel when faced with the infrastructure of large freeways, especially when closely juxtaposed with pedestrian scale areas. 3- The shapes used in Arkley’s work are solid shapes and vary mainly between rectangles and cylinders, this being as the painting is of a factory site, the smoke coming from the top of the chimneys is created using solid black lines. The artwork has little use of line to create depth but uses the darker shades of color to show more realism. The colors Arkley has used create the abstract feeling with the painting as although you are able to depict what the objects are they have been painted in unrealistic colors such as the red/orange sky and pink buildings. Arkley has painted the buildings in tones of blues, greys and silver while then painting the smoke from the chimney in bright and bold colors such as red, purple, white, yellow and orange. The colors of the smoke can be seen to represent the toxic air in which the smoke releases into the atmosphere. 4- The decision to exclude (omit) natural forms in either of the paintings has been made to emphasize the fact that if we keep constructing buildings or roads at the rate we are now we will no longer be able to fit trees into our space and all natural forms will be removed. Also if natural forms such as trees were present in the

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