That printmaker extraordinaire, Willie Rodger, has discovered Italy. Never much one for travelling before, he has discovered the taste for it and brought back a bejewelled and mysterious series of paintings which oscillate between the very human sport of people-watching and the plot of a thriller.
Using shining beetle greens, oranges, and reds, oils, contes, and pastel, Rodger draws out the heat and colours so different to the softness of Scotland. Scenes are swooped in upon - an Italian garden driveway disappears into a sinister green dusk; a midnight garden surrounds a group of musicians and threatens to engulf them; a posse of cacti and palm trees coral people in a park; a rooftop garden allows one lone sunbather to look out on to red-raw swaying and looping rooftops as burnt as herself. An element of mystery pervades - Noah the Arborist holds an umbrella and hoses an already pulsating garden; a party of nuns float across a landscape of tilting buildings; one naked man stands with his back to an empty swimming pool while another appears to be eaten by a spherical hedge.
In the city, Rodger records the endless procession of human life in front of piazzas and cathedrals, little, black moving figures speared to the white of his canvas by his observant eye. Other figures circle busts of generals on high pillars, watching each other, being watched in return by statue and tourist alike. Everything waits in the heat, separated by space.
Rodger relishes space, using it to divide and conquer, isolating the many private episodes he sees. There is an unlearnable skill to using space, overcoming the desire to fill it and, like filling silence with noise, less is undoubtedly more.
He has brought his wood cuts with him too, those stylistic, tiny studies encapsulating everything from Tobias and his angel to a view of Pisa. They are exquisite.
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