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The resulting oil paintings on panel, of which just over 40 are on display, represent Rowlett’s depth of dedication to his task. As a body of work, which includes both small-scale and larger pieces, they are his best to date, because they share a new dynamic, and one that invites a worthy comparison with great mountain painters of the past, notably Cézanne and the Swiss artist Hodler. Rowlett always works in situ with tubs of Stokes’s peculiarly viscous oil paints, which he applies with a decorator’s trowel; a choice of tool that exploits the potential of part-mixed colours and chance touches of paint. Back in the studio, the creative process continues, as works are reflected upon, modified or set aside.
Like Ruskin, Rowlett believes in the importance of being true to occurrences in Nature and not, as gestural-type of painting is often interpreted, creating art purely as a vehicle of personal expression. As Rowlett’s works are concerned with authenticity, the material impact of a blizzard or the wind-borne rich peat of the Lake District are allowed to remain and make their mark.
In his journal, Rowlett records that, ‘as far as I’m concerned, Nature and paint are the same thing’. The process of looking and observing chance relationships of colour and light in Nature leads to wonderful confluences of colours. Rich ultramarines, oranges, yellows, mauves, pinks and warm and cool greys seem to flow down the mountainside, as part of the ‘natural gravity of paint’, in works such as ‘L’Aiguille du Dru from Montenvers, Afternoon Light’ and ‘Le Grand Marchet, L’Arcelin from Pralognan, Morning Light’. The glacier formations and drifts of snow, which in Rowlett’s paintings are never pure white, are suggested in weighty drifts and ledges of paint in a key work, ‘From the Col de Montets, L’Aiguille Verte, le Dru, les Aiguilles de Chamonix and Mont Blanc, Morning Light’. Elsewhere, changing weather conditions, captured in works such as ‘Le Grand Marchet, L’Arcelin, Afternoon Light’ recall to the artist a Turneresque ambiguity of mountain and cloud.
The radiant autumnal colours of ‘Moon and Pink Clouds Behind Coniston Old Man, Orange Reflections’ offer a powerful contrast with the sweep of surging greys in ‘Across the Lake to Coniston Village from Brantwood, Grey Cloud and Rain’. Ruskin, as the exhibition catalogue reminds us, observed that ‘the purest and most thoughtful minds are those which love colour the most’ and ‘mountains are the beginning and the end of all natural scenery’. Rowlett’s paintings are an accomplished response to this.
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Also by Angela Summerfield
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