These Are Paintings

October 16, 2010 8:56 PM

"These paintings became a way to explore how driving in weather shifts and changes the views outside the car as well how the driving experience informs our basic interpretation of environment." The work of artist Gregory Thielker.
posted by fantodstic (8 comments total)

this one with its sepia tones puts me in mind of early spring in the cape girardeau, MO area where i grew up. one year it rained so hard on a sunday while we were in church that the mighty hubble flooded the road just outside gordonville and we couldn't get back home, not until the next day. had to stay in a hotel. and the sky looked just like this, rain on the car windows, just like this.

it seems probably a lot of us, particularly in the US, have seen the world this way all our lives, ever-changing through car windows.
posted by miss patrish at 11:14 PM on October 16, 2010 [1 favorite]

wow. these are beautiful. would love to see them in the flesh - on screen they look more like treated photographs than paintings, a bit like some of gerhard richter's stuff does. thanks for posting....
posted by peterkins at 12:35 AM on October 17, 2010

I really like these paintings. A great impressionist view of the life outside the car window. I like being inside the car when it rains, you get all the wonder and joy of the water pelting down and all the snug feeling of being inside and not wet.

Yet, I wonder if I could use these photographs to desensitize myself from the stress I feel from driving in the rain. I was in a very bad car wreck as a teen that involved a lot of water and therefore I usually feel particularly unsafe when I drive in the rain as if I'm going to be washed off the road. The amount of rain on these windshields makes it look as if Gregory Thielker is going to be washed off the road and I have to hope that he pulled over to make some of these shots. Yet, not having the inside of the car in the pictures seems to detach the car and myself from the fact that these are driving photos. They could just as easily be taken from the a solid glass block on a street corner.

Nice post.
posted by aetg at 6:31 AM on October 17, 2010

The quest to create a school of landscape painting that reflects the visual world as we experience it today, is one of the most useful projects any artist could undertake. There is beauty to be discovered in the world of cars and sprawl and city streets and freeways and lights and telephone poles. Wayne Thiebaud has tackled it. Japanese artists who do anime backgrounds don't flinch from it. Gregory Thielker has taken it up with a will. I wish him great success.
posted by Faze at 6:53 AM on October 17, 2010 [2 favorites]

Those were really moving ( ugh, sorry about the pun ). Thank you for this post.
posted by saucysault at 7:38 AM on October 17, 2010

Glad you guys liked these :)

"The quest to create a school of landscape painting that reflects the visual world as we experience it today, is one of the most useful projects any artist could undertake."

Yes, this is something I thought as I saw these paintings. A lot of visual art, especially, shall we call it "commercial art" these days seems to focus on everything BUT modern human experience; a lot of it seems so flashy and fantastical and "sexy", and a lot of it is very technically intricate. However, it always feels (at least to me) rather empty and I have a hard time connecting with it in a meaningful way, if that makes sense. These paintings were especially moving to me because I've spent a lot of time in cars (I'm in L.A.) and I have a fair amount of photography from that (a lot of it cell phone pictures).
posted by fantodstic at 4:32 PM on October 17, 2010

I've heard from a couple of artists that painting water is one of the most difficult of all challenges for realists. Boy, has this guy mastered it! His work is just gorgeous, even if the scene is not, necessarily. Like that.

Thanks for the post. Would be interested in seeing a good blog about painting -- not art, but painting.
posted by softjeans at 10:51 PM on October 17, 2010

Love these. Thanks.
posted by purenitrous at 8:40 AM on October 18, 2010