Iain Faulkner’s enquiry into the male image continues with a suite of new paintings which locate his subject in dramatic Scottish landscape. These scenes are set on and around water. Faulkner’s protagonist is shown at the helm of a speedboat or standing contemplating the waters. We view him from behind. We see what he sees and join him in anticipation of a journey ahead.
Faulkner deploys his trademark skill and assured fluency of technique in making these images. He describes the play of light across sea, forest and land; the spume, spray and mist of turbulent water; the subtly-various textures of cloth, polished wood and chrome. His is a painstaking and thorough approach, where all that is seen is analysed, measured and distilled down to its pictorial essence.
The landscape looms large, expressive of a Romantic sensibility that prompts an emotional response. Faulkner’s deft treatment of colour, atmospheric effect and aerial perspective conveys a sense of monumental and expansive space, within which his hero asserts himself. We can see correspondences to a broad tradition of Scottish landscape painting, which locks into a profound sense of place and belonging. The boat, immersed in this grandeur and guided by its pilot, carves out a path through the sparkling waters, throwing out a foaming, churning backwash. Our viewpoint is literally in the voyager’s wake. He leads and we follow.
The depiction of an autonomous and independent male engaged in an undetermined quest is typical of this artist. It is a trope that he returns to throughout his career and sits at the thematic heart of his practice. Faulkner’s vital and capable helmsman moves alone through the world, exploring its possibilities. These paintings are an elegy for such adventurers and suggest a nostalgia for an idea of ‘modernity’ that is currently under threat.
