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An experimenter with color combinations and forms, Stephens’ works emphasize buildings, the abstract angular possibilities they afford and the way the light can be made to reflect from them.
There are skies, mountains and other landscape elements featured. But I came away impressed with the way ordinary buildings continue to fascinate Chris as well as the way he lends warmth to them, irrespective of what time of day or night he seems to have been looking at them.
In several of the pictures he has been beguiled by sunsets, almost always difficult to paint successfully because the reds tends to look too strong when they are shown with other aspects of a landscape against a blue sky.
Two of his most ambitious pieces, “Evening Light” and “Last Light”, are three dimensional scenes set in architecturally designed frames, decorated on both sides with slim columns. One shows a simple, gabled farm house set in a large hilly landscape, and at the horizon a Blue Ridge peak looks familiar. A flaming cloud floats in a darkening blue sky. Loneliness marks the shadowed face of the isolated house.
In none of these paintings do we see people or animals, although all but two show dwellings or town structures. I think the absence of creatures is owing to Christopher’s determination to let nothing likely to move to distract from his focus on the “life” that colors and geometric forms can suggest.
After looking at the show for some time, I realized that four of the works are based on one set of combined structures. We first see them in a charcoal drawing, “Night Piece,’’that is lighted by a full moon,
Next we see it as “Piece of Light at 3 p.m.”, then “Piece of Light at 4 p.m. at which time the painter has altered his point of view.
Finally, in “Piece of Light”, the largest painting in the show, we see a fully developed display of colors and angles that is strikingly interesting for its composition, and glowing, ocher-muted greens, pinks, blues, purple and more.
This picture, like many others, has a wide painted wooden frame that produces a three dimensional effect. The frame and the picture are essentially one.
Because the works in the show develop a theme, as the title suggests, a superficial viewing may encourage one to think that these pictures are much alike. But careful analysis brings out surprising differences that reflect the thoughtfulness with which the artist has made these studies. ; Two pictures, “Snow Lines” and “Snow in Grooves” are landscapes with no buildings. They appear to be scenes of roughly the same area of mountains, water, and fields.
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