Vast, Sweeping Landscapes: Art by Frank Kusch
Alone in the Field, oil on canvas
Frank Kusch is a painter who specializes in vast, sweeping landscapes, capturing skies and weather events with a great sense of scale. Using both oil and acrylic paint, Frank captures the majesty and power of clouds, waves, and other natural phenomena.
I really enjoy Frank’s recent series of paintings that focus on clouds and skies. The subject matter – clouds, oftentimes rendered with barely any earthly context -- reminds me of work by Ian Fisher. Unlike Fisher’s often peaceful, pillow-y clouds, however, Frank’s works depict the skies in a state of turmoil. Deep, dark grey backgrounds with roiling highlights of white and occasional colors create a fascinating sense of tension in Frank’s landscapes. One gets a sense of dramatic narrative from these paintings.
Frank’s water imagery captures a similar tone – in his wave paintings, the artist treats the ocean in a similar manner to his skies, rendering crashing waves and churning water with a similar attention to highlights and abstracted detail.
