This work is a beautiful rendering of the city straddling a river executed through pointillism.
This work carves out its own unique position on the abstraction scale.
Jacquette’s treatment of the background makes the scene look like it’s snowing.
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The
subject is obvious enough; this is a work of pastel on off-white woven paper. It is impressionistic; though the scene is
pleasing, one gets a sense of the impurities in the air causing the distance to
fade in a haze, and the chilly crispness in the air as it snows. Point
is the element used in this work to, through closure, build shapes and inspire impressions. They vary in color and purity, but for the most part lack chroma
and stick to the middle/high-key. Space
is seamlessly created through changes in detail and atmospheric perspective.
This
work strongly favors harmony over disorder. Values do not clash and are
analogous, as are colors, not in hue, but where they group up in terms of purity.
Shapes are vaguely rigid in the foreground, begin to lose definition as the eye travels upward (to the middle ground), and become more biomorphic in the background. There
is graceful contrast between the directional forces of the foreground
(vertical) and background (diffuse horizontal). The unexpected oblique and
elevated perspective creates some needed tension.
The
skyline creates a jagged rhythm the eye follows from left to right or right to
left, followed by the more stable and softer pattern created by the
diagonally-slanted rectangular figures resting on the river. The
picture frame supports the horizontal “flow” of this work; the picture plane is treated like most
two-dimensional works in that it is a sort of glass plane the viewer looks
through to the scene.
Jacquette
has acknowledged the influence that Seurat and Van Gogh have had on her works.
With a handful of elements (point, implied shape, atmospheric perspective), she
has created a truly elegant, unified work that keeps faith with the
impressionist style she loves.
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