Todd Carpenter 1

The Belt Tightened

2019

Knifed, 2019

Todd Carpenter's (US based) "There that yet may be" is an oil painting that depicts a black and white landscape of a city's lights nestled in a canyon between mountains, with swirlin...

"Undersky" depicts flashes of city lights. These small paintings have so much to say and we can say they beckon viewers to draw closer and observe all that artist has been able to co...

Todd Carpenter As a painter, I examine how the depiction of light contributes to our experience of paintings. The portrayal of light helps a painting to convey the atmosphere and mood of a scene, and is much of what enables a painting to convey depth and realism. Our perception of lighting features occurs largely through pathways in the brain that carry only black and white information, pathways which are distinct from areas that encode the colors and details we use to delineate specific objects. By painting in grayscale, I try to interact specifically with this region of our visual system, with the hope of conveying some of the spaciousness and emotional significance that light can imbue on scenes. Light, whether as the crisp contrast of a back-lit forest or the gray haze of an industrial landscape, is what defines a scene. Its power to communicate the feel of a place is the principle subject of my paintings. The Blue...