3 dimensional canvas constructions
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Okay, so you're an artist that wants to express himself in three dimensions. Throw away your brushes, your oils and your canvasses and get yourself a lump of rock, wood or metal. Or....drive to your local junk yard and try to salvage your canvasses, if it's not too late, because as John Hewitt shows, canvasses can be used to create three dimensional art.
While many post-WWII artists have been on the design-side of the dividing line between art and design, John Hewitt's art work "standing stone" puts him firmly in the fine art camp.
Now, all of John Hewitt's art works are very decorative and well made, but the artistic success of his paintings seems to depend to a large degree on the three dimensional aspect and there "standing stone" may be John's most radical 3D painting. Perhaps the cool colors of Standing stone better suit John's industrial style than the reds and yellows of some of his other works that remind of Spanish modern art. No matter from which angle you look at standing stone, see detailed images, it's always in compositional balance and exciting to watch. For the most part, shapes are geometric rather than organic and while this painting is only 60 inches high, it looks much larger.
John's love of organic shapes remind of Gaudi and Picasso and many of his paintings have a (deliberate) surreal absurdist flavor and some elements are floppy (as in Dali's floppy clocks). Other paintings remind of the abstract art of the 1960s with it's emphasis on clarity and purity and geometric patterns and colors akin to Op Art.
Standing Stone is John Hewitt's most original work and if influences can be discerned, then the Celtic arts and crafts would come to my mind.
Canvas constructions won't be everyone's choice to create 3D art, but they inspire John Hewitt to make powerful and innovative art works like Standing Stone.
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