Patricia Rosoff
The Hartford Advocate
“Ilse Gordon records landscapes with an eye for texture, stitching views with a thousand hummingbird strokes. Her images are trembling surfaces, like needlework of the utmost complexity. What would seam traditional, however, is subverted by a surprisingly tough sense of structure and a sense of humor. In “Winter Kale,” Gordon’s garden plots seem more like a parade ground. Blocks of vegetables are aligned like corps of soldiers receding in perspective echelons as far as the eye can see, while overhead the sky is ribboned, like so many banners waving.
It is in her touch that Gordon’s style is most distinctive. She reaches past the surface to a deeper, almost molecular reality. Consequently, though her works are the most dense, the most richly colored, the most closely observed. Gordon’s works are also most atmospheric.”
Winter Kale, Oil, 28 x 36”
Ann Guité
Greenwich Arts Council
Working in the impressionist plein air mode, Gordon actually executes her pastels and oils outside and on-the-spot, recording her immediate responses to specific views of nature in and around Greenwich.
Gordon often returns to paint her favorite local spots under varying conditions of weather and light, recording each familiar tree or rock with loving exactitude. She builds up each image with lively, quickly applied strokes and daubs of color, which not only define the forms of the foliage, clouds and water, but also capture something of their constant, vibrating movement on a breezy day. Yet for all their descriptive truth, Gordons landscapes transcend the limits of the visible world through the sheer beauty of their color. This is especially evident in the pastels, such as Pink Phlox Along the Path or my personal favorite, Trumpet Vines on Eagle Pond. The intricately orchestrated and radiant color harmonies give these scenes a look of improbable loveliness, so that they seem to exist in an enhanced realm beyond that of perceivable reality.
Gordon’s landscapes are also a pleasure to look at for their expansive, open spaces and subtly balanced arrangements of form, which evoke the sense of a quiet, serene moment forever suspended in time. Interestingly, not a single scene includes the human figure, so that the viewer can experience each view of nature just as the artist did --alone and undisturbed. Many of the landscapes contain a path leading from the front of the picture deep into its illusionistic space, which seems to invite us to stroll right into this ideal world of heightened natural beauty, unspoiled by any reference to industry or commerce.
Trumpet Vines on Eagle Pond, Pastel, 13 x 17”
Pink Phlox Along the Path, Pastel, 13 x 17”