As The World Turns: The Art of Ben Whitehouse

If you reflect on artists who paint en plein air and strive to capture the transient effects of color and light, the style of Impressionism might come to mind. Historically the Impressionists were a group of artists painting during the 1880s and dedicated to painting the effects of atmosphere and weather, capturing light as it played on form. A contemporary plein air artist concerned with these same concepts is Ben Whitehouse; whose art currently fills two galleries at the Delaware Center for Contemporary Arts. The fluctuations of light over time direct his paintings. Whitehouse has spent long periods of time outside, noticing the subtle variations in light and the vague and changing atmospheric effects of nature.
Whitehouse was born in England in 1945 and currently lives in the United States. He received his MFA from the University of Chicago where as a student he studied the paintings of Claude Monet. From seeing an exhibit of Monet’s paintings that focused on a repeated architectural or natural form in different daylight conditions such as the series of paintings of Rouen Cathedral, he noted the grouping of these works and wondered about the moments and times that went unmarked.(Isaacs,1) This led to his current work of documenting the nuances of light changing as time passed and the earth rotated. In some instances, every moment in a twenty-four hour day is captured.
One wall of the gallery consists of thirty one 11” x 14” oil paintings of the same site on the shore of Lake Michigan. Called March, Whitehouse painted daily, between 9am and 11am, on the lake near his studio and to emphasize time, installed this series of small oils in the shape of a calendar month. These oils are a meditation on the light and color of the shore of Lake Michigan and emphasize wind direction, cloud formations, the color of water and sky, roughness of the sea, and reflections of light on water and most importantly, push mood more than form. Whitehouse states that these paintings not only record light but act as a “meditation on the fluidity of natural phenomena and the passage of time.” (Isaacs, 2) Some days of the month conjure up a mist slapping us in the face and others the serenity of a calm, warm day. One can stand there amazed at the variation.
In a tighter time frame, Watch Over Central Park, consists of forty eight 5” x 5” panels depicting a single patch of sky looking both east and west. There are two circles of twenty four panels each, one for each direction and each hour in a rotation of the earth. This nonrepresentational collection of paintings has eliminated everything but the color of each hour. Two circles rotating in opposite directions mark both daylight and night colors of peachy dawns, brilliant white noon, crisp blues and deep black nights. Brushstrokes are negligent and any landscape structure eliminated. We are left with a meditation on color and a reminder of cycles and gravity by Whitehouse’s decision to adhere each painting to the wall with magnets which form strong circular structures that stress the force of gravity and rotation of the earth. These are a shift from March and much more sculptural and minimal while still holding the feelings of atmosphere. How much can an artist eliminate and still give the viewer the memory and emotion of a moment in time?
George Santayana in his book, The Sense of Beauty, talks about the landscape and its indeterminacy. “The natural landscape is an indeterminate object; it almost always contains enough diversity to allow the eye a great liberty in selecting, emphasizing, and grouping its elements and it is furthermore rich in suggestion and in vague emotional stimulus.”(133) Most of the canvases for this show express Whitehouse's desire to select a minimal amount of landscape to emphasize the emotional stimuli of images born of an experience. He does so brilliantly. Right away we are aware of the weather he was witnessing depicted by these squares of color and the transition of color from one to another. More visual information was unnecessary.
There are two other video installations that move us from the minimalist paintings to an over detailed landscape. These create the opposite effect of Whitehouse’s paintings by including real visuals in real time and making us work hard to decide what to focus on. Two 65” plasmas screens display his films called Revolution: North Bar Lake, 2006 and Revolution: Central Park, 2006. Each one is filmed for twenty four straight hours and records every moment, light fluctuation, animal or human presence, and natural occurrences. One must slow down and relax for to see the subtle changes. It is left to the viewer now to select what to focus on in each film. We do the work that Santayana is speaking of by selecting from the diversity and focusing on some element in the frame. Whether one is captivated by the wind on the rippled lake or fascinated by the cloud movement over Central Park, we can scan each screen for those same effects laid down in paint in March and Watch Over Central Park. It is as though Whitehouse is telling us to pay attention to the nuances in our own environments. It is also a great way to end ones time in this show because even after walking out the museum doors, you are left wondering what is happening now on North Bar Lake.

Through January 6, 2008, DCCA, 200 S. Madison St., Wilmington DE

Works Cited

Isaacs, J. Susan. Ben Whitehouse: Revolution. Museum catalog. August 17, 2007- January 6, 2008.

Santayana, George. The Sense of Beauty: Being the Outlines of Aesthetic Theory. New York, Random House, 1955.