The Art of Robert Pittam: Sea of Serenity

Robert Pittam's art can be seen on these Websites, with the understanding that no Website images can do justice to the paintings.

http://www.watersidestives.com/painting-artist/robert-pittam/

From the site:

'[his paintings show a] distinctive style in which the very diverse influences of his favourite painters Vermeer and Edward Hopper can be clearly seen. His still lifes have a dark intensity and richness in the Dutch tradition and yet his landscapes and figures draw upon the surreal and polished style of Hopper.' 

http://www.hicksgallery.co.uk/artist/robert-pittam/

From the site:

'Greatly influenced by the work of Vermeer and Edward Hopper, I too aim for a certain quality of stillness in my pictures. The still-lifes often include fishes and I believe that they are amongst the most interesting subjects in nature to study in paint. Possessing colour, pattern, reflectivity, perfectly evolved streamlined shapes and a three dimensional form to ‘sculpt’ in light and shade – they might also be read as metaphors for the sea itself.'

http://www.innocentfineart.co.uk/art/robert-pittam/

http://www.robertpittam.co.uk/

The moon's Sea of Serenity, like the other large, dark, basaltic plains which are the Seas of the Moon, is no ordinary sea and Robert Pittam's paintings of the life of the seas and objects from the sea or by the sea are no ordinary paintings, and certainly not derivative paintings. Although Vermeer and Hopper are influences, his individuality is obvious. 

His still life paintings are still but seem permeated by lines of force. The paintings which show fish in pairs remind me of sources of electrical energy in pairs where the electric force between them is palpable - a highly-charged stillness. He has made very fruitful use of the series of paintings. A mathematical series often goes on to infinity and the series of paintings which pursue a theme, such as the theme of fish grouped with another fish or with other objects to do with the sea, suggest, if not infinity, something vast. The series to be found in his paintings indicates the inexhaustible interest of the subject.

The development of astronomy and geology and the study of evolutionary history enlarged our understanding and gave us a conception of vastly enlarged space and time. Robert Pittam's still life paintings are far from being exquisite miniatures - although their technique is superb. So, the fish he paints on a plate are far from limited beings, whose purposes are mainly culinary. To me, they suggest the living things which began their history about 530 million years ago, during the Cambrian explosion, the living things which began the vertebrate odyssey. But this reminds me of some non-scientific associations, such as the wine-dark sea of Homer, or, by a paradox, of dark and luminous seas.

I think that Robert Pittam points the way out of the impasse, or the dilemma, of realism and abstraction in art, or many forms of realism and abstraction.  Both of these have disadvantages. How to choose between them? Robert Pittam has presented in many of his paintings to present elements which exhibit clear cut spatial relationships, for example, two fish at a short distance from each other. This is an art of clear-cut mensuration, unlike the messier, more informal world of a reasiltic painting in which there may be an abundance of elements without such clear mensuration. The placing of the elements in the visual plane is clearer and simpler than in most still life paintings, such as those of Cezanne. There seems to me to be a linkage with formal garden design, where the elements of the garden, such as hedges and beds, have a clarity of spatial organization which is very different frrom the more chaotic world of a naturalistic garden.

But the elements of a Robert Pittam still life, like the elements of formal planting, aren't abstract shapes, with clear-cut, regular forms, but objects with sensuous immediacy. They are pockets of naturalism carefully placed in an otherwise abstract composition. The paintings are composites, natural and artful, carefully designed, carefully measured, but without loss of the advantages of realism.