與偏愛戶外繪畫的莫內和康斯塔伯不同的是,阿魯達的繪畫並非從任何一個特定視角出發。反之,他喜愛想像的力量,並將壯觀的海平線視為激發情感和思考的源泉。正如藝術家所指出的:「在某種程度上,我的作品被稱為風景畫的唯一理由是出自文化層面的:這僅僅是因為觀者不由自主地會將我創作的形式視為風景畫,僅管沒有任何圖像有其真實地理位置可尋。它只是一個風景的概念,而非一個真實的地方。」 ii
Lucas Arruda is a Brazilian contemporary artist who lives and works in São Paolo. Arruda paints diffusive land- and seascapes characterized by faint horizon lines, intense internal light, and a placid expression of the sublime. His paintings recreate the unrelenting violence of nature, blending wisps of clouds and the foam of the sea into the indistinguishable whole of the storm. His works are meditations on memory and loss, created by paradoxically using abstraction as a means to achieve illusory figuration.
Arruda’s paintings are marked both by an all-encompassing elusiveness and an immersive turbulence of form. Primarily working on an intimate scale, Arruda co-opts the onerous expressiveness of abstract painting to create scenes of the intense power and beauty of nature. Arruda’s formal experimentations with the temperament of light and the capabilities of tonality align his work with that of James Abbott Whistler and J.M.W. Turner as much as with that of Mark Rothko and Clyfford Still.