The subject of self-taught artist Philip Muñoz is the English west country, particularly Somerset, Devon and Cornwall. He concentrates on coastal scenes where the three elements of land, sea and sky come together. These skilful studies of topography and climate are each small essays evoking a specific time and place.
Muñoz works in oil on panel. His technique is cooly analytical and follows the descriptive tradition of representational painting. In certain passages, where a relaxed focus is appropriate, he allows the mark of the brush and its occasional gestural flourish to assert itself. We see this in the treatment of scudding clouds, wind-driven foliage and choppy seas. This makes for a contrast with more tightly rendered areas, such as those where people and structures require closer definition. Azure blues, sandy ochres and muted grass-greens are the basis of the painter’s palette, at times offset by deeper ultramarines, veridians and charcoal greys. The varying forms and textures of trees, rocks, water and field are described with a fluent hand.
The artist maps and defines the specific characteristics of each picturesque location. This group of pictures can be read sequentially and appears to describe a peripatetic journey into the West. Each composition is a named place and carries echoes of the tours undertaken by nineteenth century artists such as Cotman and Turner as they assembled their compendiums of British landscape. The essential difference between then and now is that Muñoz’s travels reveals a landscape devoted as much to leisure and tourism as to agriculture and industry.
These images are emphatically calm and contemplative. The painter revels in the joy of his quiet appraisal and takes pleasure in a virtuoso application of oil paint. He invites us to take the tour.
