Ron Bechet’s contribution to the Saint Claude collective exhibition is typical of his recent practice. It is a figurative painting of the lower portion of a large tree, probably a great oak, and its roots. This natural scene appears drawn from the southern Louisiana landscape. It was painted with a quick, gestural hand; the impasto is heavily, the brush strokes clearly evident. His palette is of blues, greens, and yellows. He gives the scene greater significance by painting onto a three dimensional canvas of his own devising. The surface is rounded horizontally and has a trench-like indentation down the middle. The shaped canvas seems architectural and gives the painting a stronger presence, a stronger sense of how it occupies space. What is offered leaves us in no doubt that Bechet attributes a spiritual importance to the landscape and to trees in particular.
Sarah Brewer