Untitled (in 2 parts) (2018)

Simon Ling is best known for his close-cropped paintings of urban and rural settings, often working en plein air. Across his practice, his work employs an intensity of looking or, as the artist puts it himself, ‘it is a question of how you see something, not what it is.’ Both his urban and rural works depict small areas of architecture or landscape, often produced on a monumental size so that a dichotomy emerges between scale and subject. In order to avoid overlaying his works with any suggestion of narrative, Ling does not give his paintings descriptive or allusive titles.

Underpainting in fluorescent orange paint has been a characteristic of Ling’s work for years, the colour vibrating on the edges of each composition, lending them an almost hallucinogenic quality. In these new paintings the contrast between this glowing orange and the dark tones of the wood is even greater – the logs appear as if supernaturally irradiated. The dark voids that draw the eye beyond the foreground recede into infinite, inky depths. In Untitled, Ling introduces a counterpoint to more romantic visions of landscape with these intense depictions of the forest floor and rotting log stacks. Close-cropped treatment of a tumbled woodpile gives each craggy log a powerful presence; the tectonic facets of the cracking bark articulating surfaces that vividly translate the sensation of touch through that of sight.

The works were originally shown in Ling’s 2018 solo exhibition at Towner, Eastbourne. His work has been of interest to Amgueddfa Cymru – National Museum Wales for some time, particularly in terms of his importance to contemporary painting and the relationship between his work and the wider tradition of the art of the Welsh landscape. Ling grew up in Pembrokeshire and retains a studio on the Welsh border; this acquisition adds to the ongoing conversation within the museum collection on the representation of place.

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