Photo by Gib Myers
The Mind's Eye
Few people live in Montana.[1] In 1951, when Clyde Aspevig was born, there were even fewer. Ably raised by parents who instilled in him a knack for being self-reliant, Aspevig early on began a lifelong relationship with the living land—an ever-present friend. It is to this “stage where all our experiences take place”[2] that Clyde Aspevig returns repeatedly to reexamine it during every season and under every circumstance.
Clyde Aspevig is occasionally described as self-taught. While he did not go to art school per se, in the course of gaining a general liberal arts education Aspevig did indeed study art. He might not go so far as those who ascribe no value to specialist art schools, but he knew that the direction he wished to go as a painter would not be encouraged in the atmosphere prevailing at most art schools. He shared the view held by many artists that an ever-evolving intimacy with this chosen subject matter was the most effective education.[3]
For Aspevig, that subject matter has been the peaks, shores, coulees, and forests that have formed the bedrock of his work. Fast forward through his decades of experience, and what does the viewer now see in the wake of this artist’s aesthetic, geographic, and psychic journeys? A progression is clear. Aspevig today adopts a varying approach to the treatment of detail, selection of vantage points, subtleties of palette, and approach to composition. An entire hillside might consume the foreground, or the viewer might feel herself wading into a cloud of brush … the younger Aspevig might not have dared to develop such compositions.
He notes the dangers of becoming too comfortable with a subject. On the flip side, he acknowledges the opportunities that a highly developed skill can give a painter, if that painter accepts both the freedom and the risk of aesthetic inquiry. He can now combine his cache of memories with the images before him, analyzing both what his eye tells him and what his brain tells him. The process is paradoxically both deliberate and unfettered. These days, he sometimes “shuts off the visual mode” and experiments with pure form and accidental color in the studio.[4] The result is a universe of seasons, colors, forms, and feelings … and, yes, boulders, ice, cataracts, the glint from a burst of spring leaves, and the blood-red shock of autumn. It is indeed the land, but far more than the eye can see.
In the midst of experiments that occupy him today, Aspevig’s wellspring remains the land itself, in its vastness and in its narrowest slivers. There is an essential optimism in the act of revisiting. It reveals a deep-seated conviction that there will be continuing reward. To see the work of an artist whose curiosity never flags is to see the visual manifestation of discovery. Aspevig’s years as an artist cleaving to the land exemplify a recurring drive to arrive at the essence of something unknown, but significant, even as the artist’s ideas about that essence also evolve. Nothing matters more than the land; yet, at the same time, the land is but a means to myriad ineffable ends.
There is “an immediacy in being in the landscape, absorbing its uniqueness, light, terrain, coloration … all inspire a reaction.” His goal is that the viewer “search the canvas” and take away at least a glimmer of the sensation of being in that place. Regarding this goal, Clyde Aspevig has an extraordinary gift. The world is full of landscape painters, but few convey an understanding of the deep structure of the earth, its unnamable colors, and its animating liveliness. Few can paint the very air.
Also by Robyn Peterson, "The Stone’s Story," that appeared in Clyde’s catalogue “Nature’s Cadence”.
Copyright © 2019 by Robyn G. Peterson. All rights reserved.
[1] At the time of this writing, Montana’s population was about one-third of one percent of the total population of the United States.
[2] Artist’s quotes are from a conversation with Robyn G. Peterson, 7 April 2019.
[3] Paul Cézanne (1839–1906), for example, stated that “Nature is the best instructor.” http://www.art-quotes.com/auth_search.php?authid=92#.Wdt__9OWx9M. Accessed 9 October 2017.
[4] For such an artistic journey, the subject doesn’t matter. Aspevig cites Claude Monet’s (1840-1926) renowned series focused on Rouen Cathedral. To see one is to see a striking image of a cathedral … to see the series is to see something else entirely.
Clyde Aspevig is occasionally described as self-taught. While he did not go to art school per se, in the course of gaining a general liberal arts education Aspevig did indeed study art. He might not go so far as those who ascribe no value to specialist art schools, but he knew that the direction he wished to go as a painter would not be encouraged in the atmosphere prevailing at most art schools. He shared the view held by many artists that an ever-evolving intimacy with this chosen subject matter was the most effective education.[3]
For Aspevig, that subject matter has been the peaks, shores, coulees, and forests that have formed the bedrock of his work. Fast forward through his decades of experience, and what does the viewer now see in the wake of this artist’s aesthetic, geographic, and psychic journeys? A progression is clear. Aspevig today adopts a varying approach to the treatment of detail, selection of vantage points, subtleties of palette, and approach to composition. An entire hillside might consume the foreground, or the viewer might feel herself wading into a cloud of brush … the younger Aspevig might not have dared to develop such compositions.
He notes the dangers of becoming too comfortable with a subject. On the flip side, he acknowledges the opportunities that a highly developed skill can give a painter, if that painter accepts both the freedom and the risk of aesthetic inquiry. He can now combine his cache of memories with the images before him, analyzing both what his eye tells him and what his brain tells him. The process is paradoxically both deliberate and unfettered. These days, he sometimes “shuts off the visual mode” and experiments with pure form and accidental color in the studio.[4] The result is a universe of seasons, colors, forms, and feelings … and, yes, boulders, ice, cataracts, the glint from a burst of spring leaves, and the blood-red shock of autumn. It is indeed the land, but far more than the eye can see.
In the midst of experiments that occupy him today, Aspevig’s wellspring remains the land itself, in its vastness and in its narrowest slivers. There is an essential optimism in the act of revisiting. It reveals a deep-seated conviction that there will be continuing reward. To see the work of an artist whose curiosity never flags is to see the visual manifestation of discovery. Aspevig’s years as an artist cleaving to the land exemplify a recurring drive to arrive at the essence of something unknown, but significant, even as the artist’s ideas about that essence also evolve. Nothing matters more than the land; yet, at the same time, the land is but a means to myriad ineffable ends.
There is “an immediacy in being in the landscape, absorbing its uniqueness, light, terrain, coloration … all inspire a reaction.” His goal is that the viewer “search the canvas” and take away at least a glimmer of the sensation of being in that place. Regarding this goal, Clyde Aspevig has an extraordinary gift. The world is full of landscape painters, but few convey an understanding of the deep structure of the earth, its unnamable colors, and its animating liveliness. Few can paint the very air.
Also by Robyn Peterson, "The Stone’s Story," that appeared in Clyde’s catalogue “Nature’s Cadence”.
Copyright © 2019 by Robyn G. Peterson. All rights reserved.
[1] At the time of this writing, Montana’s population was about one-third of one percent of the total population of the United States.
[2] Artist’s quotes are from a conversation with Robyn G. Peterson, 7 April 2019.
[3] Paul Cézanne (1839–1906), for example, stated that “Nature is the best instructor.” http://www.art-quotes.com/auth_search.php?authid=92#.Wdt__9OWx9M. Accessed 9 October 2017.
[4] For such an artistic journey, the subject doesn’t matter. Aspevig cites Claude Monet’s (1840-1926) renowned series focused on Rouen Cathedral. To see one is to see a striking image of a cathedral … to see the series is to see something else entirely.
