Feb

11

Wolfgang Bloch

Filed Under Art and Artists | Leave a Comment

While rummaging around Barnes and Noble this past weekend, I came across a monograph of work by an artist I had never heard of. The cover image is what caught my eye. It was an image of a surfline painted from a the perspective of a great distance. The sky was a turbulent blackened grey and the image appear to have been created at least partially on a piece of rough wood. I decided to become more familiar with the work of Wolfgang Bloch.

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If you read anything about Bloch, you will learn three things; he is from Ecuador, he surfs and that his lifelong love of the ocean deeply influences his work. What I learned about Bloch from looking at his paintings is that he is capably communicates both the primal power and the hypnotic beauty of the sea.

I rode ships across most of the world’s oceans as a younger man. I would often gaze out upon the horizon and just stare. Even during violent storms, the horizon remained unchanged, eternal and unreachable. What I remember is despite the ever-changing appearance of sea and sky together, their combined beauty almost always produced a sense of wonder and awe.

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The other thing that I was invited to recall by Bloch’s work is the mysterious nature of sea. There were times I would be staring at an incredibly noisy and dramatic display of the sea’s power as storm driven waves rose up to great heights and exploded into a furious display of sea spray and foam in a matter of seconds. Yet I was also aware that not very far below the surface there would be no evidence of the turbulence on the surface and that despite its furious extraversion, its real power was in its deep silence.

Turner impressed me with his ability to capture that furious power of the sea. But Wolfgang Bloch reminded me of what always mesmerized me about the sea; its extroverted beauty and its inscrutable depths exist simultaneously. Bloch has captured this in way I cannot recall anyone doing before.