John Comer paints the landscape
of southern California, both as it has been
created by nature and as it has been altered
by man.
He captures the region in a manner reminiscent
of earlier plein-aire painters, but Comer is
not a backward-looking artist. He paints wildflowers,
forests and beaches, but he also paints freeway
onramps and apartment buildings. His work covers
the full spectrum of California landscape,
from wilderness to city, paying homage to the
idyllic
light that has captivated generations of California
painters. Distinguished by a level of craft
rarely seen in contemporary painting, his landscapes
are both skillful renditions of familiar and
unfamiliar scenes, and subtle meditations on
time, space, and light.
Comer grew up in southern
California, swimming and surfing on the beaches
of Orange County.
He began painting after receiving a box of
paints for his thirteenth birthday, and has
spent his
life pursuing his two passions, art and the
sea. After early success as a landscape painter
in
Santa Barbara in the 1970’s, he spent a
number of years outside the world of art, working
as a commercial fisherman off the Channel Islands
and sailing his boat “Debonair”,
down the Pacific coast and through the Caribbean
and Hawaii. His years as a sailor have made Comer
appreciate the importance of the atmosphere in
a painting. “I’ve seen a lot of weather”,
he says. “It’s like the landscape
is secondary; The weather is the important thing.
It affects what you see and don’t see-
the colors and shapes.” Comer’s
voyages included a stay on Maui, where he worked
with
the painter Julian Ritter. For many years he
shared a Santa Barbara studio with Ray Strong,
the legendary landscape painter who worked
alongside Maynard Dixon and has acted as mentor
to many
Santa Barbara artists. Comer credits Strong
with helping him master the interrelation of
color
and value in his paintings, which allows him
to combine vivid color with the illusion of
deep space. Other major influences on his art
are
George Inness, the nineteenth century American
painter whose dynamic landscapes are energized
by changing effects of light and weather, and
Corot, the French landscapist who began his
career painting the golden light and picturesque
ruins
of the countryside around Rome.
In the tradition of painters
who have celebrated southern California in
their work, from Granville
Redmond to Richard Diebenkorn, John Comer focuses
on the dramatic topography and idyllic light
of the region. He distills the experience of
a particular place at a particular time down
to a coherent arrangement of colors and forms.
His paintings of urban scenes, of freeways
and skyscrapers, share the color and space
of his
other landscapes, creating what Comer calls
a “synthesis
of culture and land” in an area that “is
constantly in the process of tearing down and
rebuilding.” He paints the landscape as
it has always been and the landscape as it is
being changed. To both he imparts an awareness
of time, of the daily progression of the sun
across the sky, of the process of man’s
intervention on the land, and of the timeless
presences of sea, land, and weather. The space
in Comer’s paintings seems to extent
beyond the horizon and outside the edges of
the canvas,
giving a sense of the roundness of the earth.
His paintings are an invitation to travel through,
and appreciate, the beauties of our world.
