About Ernest garthwaite

Since the late 1960's Garthwaite has been dedicated towards finding a new perspective in painting. His research over the years included the making of films, sculpture, and experimenting with the painted surface using oil, acrylic, and gold leaf. His paintings depend upon the interplay between the viewer's movement and painterly shaped surfaces. 

Working in Soho in the 1970's and following the movements of Abstract Expressionism and Color Field Painting in New York City, Garthwaite began designing new formats for stretching and displaying his canvases in order to alter how the viewer experiences the painted surface. By using convex curved surfaces on wood, parabolic shapes on canvas, and new paint application procedures, his works create a new way of looking at the movement of light, color, and natural phenomena. 

The alla prima stained surfaces when combined with a third dimension alter the refraction of light and heighten the viewing experience to a level of subconscious impressions and multiple variations of shifting light. The paintings are in constant flux, just as light shifts in the natural environment; the result is a merging of painting, sculpture, and film. The sculptural shape of the canvas becomes an animated combination of convex and concave shapes that manipulate light and color as the viewer moves by the painting from one side to another. Garthwaite continues to work today towards this objective, “to blur the line between abstraction and realism and to tap into the inner movement of the land, mimicking the way light shifts in nature so that upon viewing the work your next blink is a meditation.”