REVIEW BY LARRY NEILD
(FOR ‘CONFIDENTIALS LIVERPOOL‘)
Back to basics for a new angle on Liverpool
Stunning landscapes of Liverpool by artist Dominic Burkhalter are being shown for the first time at View Two Gallery in Mathew Street in the city’s Cavern Quarter.
The creation of up to 50 works, all painted this year especially for the Liverpool exhibition, is a case of back to basics for the Londoner. Half-Swiss by parentage, he was brought up in Dorset, and now lives in the Bohemian-cum-arty Lark Lane area.
One of his paintings, Dom says proudly, has been in the National Portrait Gallery. But he all but put his paints and easels to one side as he followed a career in the digital world, working for companies like News International and the BBC.
His love of painting never left him, so he decided to head to Liverpool to paint the city, creating his new works as he viewed buildings from the streets and from the Wirral shoreline.
“Call it a kind of sabbatical for me,” says Dom, adding his re-entry into the world of painting means an end to a non-stop carousel of meetings with executives and commissioners.
Whether a return to the corporate world will be necessary depends on reaction to his new landscape paintings of Liverpool, the largest five feet wide.
So what was the magnet that attracted Dom to live and paint in Liverpool?
“Liverpool has an edge and humour that just makes it a great place to be, with a stunning skyline by the Mersey and so many iconic buildings, ranging from the world heritage waterfront to the two famous cathedrals.”
As everyone knows, if you want a cathedral we have one to spare. Dom adds: “Liverpool is the only place in the world to have a cathedral at either end of a street.”
“The irony, he says, is that an Anglican designed the Roman Catholic cathedral while a Catholic designed its cousin at the opposite end of Hope Street.”
Of course, the cathedrals feature in his latest works, with paintings of the interiors highlighting the contrasting styles of the two buildings.
Born in 1959, Dom studied politics and international relations at Southampton University before doing a foundation course at Bournemouth College of Art, leading to a degree course at the Slade School of Art.
He says his painting influences include both his parents and tutors at his various art schools. His strongest influence emerged from the English tradition of Turner’s landscapes to Patrick George, with the English and Swiss mix of understated and accurate drawing holding the greatest sway.
Growing up in the Dorset countryside added to that mix, boosted by the novels of Thomas Hardy, and watching classic films like The French Lieutenant’s Woman being filmed virtually on his doorstep.
Dom also inherited his Swiss tour guide father’s travel bug, leading to global travels during which he captured landscapes in oils.
And those travels brought him to Liverpool.
“For 25 years I worked in the digital area, from the early days of a web sites and CD-ROMs to the current world of apps and mobile technology. I’m now returning to the world of painting and giving the world of Photoshop and project plans a break,” added father of three Dom, who now lives in Liverpool with his partner Claire.
Liverpool in a New Light – Paintings by Dominic Burkhalter. View Two Gallery: Friday August 14 to Saturday October 17, 2015. Other times by appointment.
REVIEW BY ASHLEY MCGOVERN
(FOR ‘NERVE MAGAZINE PART OF CATALYST MEDIA‘)
Dominic Burkhalter, a former computer graphics developer now turned landscape artist, is clearly riveted by Liverpool’s iconic skyline and the tides of the Mersey. This new exhibition at Mathew Street’s View Two gallery shows he’s swapped the world of pixels for pigment and reveals a sensitive appreciation for the light that wraps around our proud, historic waterfront.
Thirteen small sized canvases, like notebook leaves drenched by the outdoors, depict the Liver Building at different times and in different weathers. More than once the rain smears across the eyeline of the en plein air painter and leaves a skyline whose buildings are half-hidden by a vaporous downfall; other times the mornings are grey and unpromising but the evenings can reverse this dour start and provide a cosy pink finish before nightfall. Throughout this sequence Burkhalter captures the few golden hours that appear on any day, the moments when light, reflection, back illumination, water and bobbing architecture meet.
Also on show are spliced interior images of the two cathedrals with their altars forming a concertina of devotional spaces; the Anglican’s grand Gothic passages phase into the blue lambency that rains down from John Piper’s stained-glass Metropolitan tower. The exhibition also contains views of the earthy fields of Storeton, looking out onto the hills of North Wales, paintings of the bustle of arriving ferries and larger versions of the Liver Building drizzled with April rain.
View of Metropolitan Cathedral from Wirral is, for me, the canvas that summarises Burkhlater’s style. The tower and funnel are bars of grey and the water is conveyed through pale strips that sink and fall, first offering up silt and then, in sweeping strands, blue depths.
To paraphrase Wilde, whenever people paint the weather, I always feel quite certain they mean something else. Over the course of the next fifty years, the three graces will find modern neighbours in the numerous hotels, offices and large business towers which form the vision of the Peel Group’s plan for a new Liverpool Waterfront. By focusing solely on the monumental stature of the graces and cathedrals, Burkhalter gives them the dignity of Monet’s Rouen Cathedral series, rather than an urbane glossy vision of how they will stand next to the oncoming capitalist complex.
View Two Gallery, Mathew Street, Liverpool
Till 17th October 2015
Open: Fridays/Saturdays 12-5pm