These maritime paintings by Dolly Thompsett are deliriously splendid. Depictions of historical shipwrecks, they summon dream-like moods and feelings of epic, vintage catastrophe. Fear is, by definition, central to any shipwreck theme, and Thompsett's wetly painted swathes of deep resinous oil create a compelling sense of underwater doom. Sometimes there's a kind of hallucinatory phosphorous thing going on as well, courtesy of the glitter included in the many thick paint layers.
Death by drowning is sometimes said to be rapturous, and these paintings successfully combine peril and disaster with the oceanic infinitudes of narcosis. Neal Brown
FIRST POSTED APRIL 6, 2007
Dolly Thomsett, April 5 to May 6, open Fri-Sun 12-6pm,
Fred [London] Ltd , 45 Vyner Street,
London, E2 9DQ. 020 8981 2987 |
