Fred Holcomb Paintings

Seattle painter Fred Holcomb’s high-velocity encounters with the landscapes of the contemporary American West might be described as photorealism with a twist. The backgrounds of his oils on canvas may be impeccably crisp depictions of panoramic roadside vistas. But their closer details — trees, grass verges, guard rails, railroad tracks — are seen at outline-blurring speed, as if he were saying, “Here’s what you get at 80 miles an hour. Don’t blink or you might miss it.” The most striking painting in his new show is “Road Work,” in which two highway traffic barrels become orange-and-white smears in a streaky haze of gravel, weeds and asphalt. The same tension informs all of Holcomb’s work as he both evokes the sprawling landscapes and natural grandeur of the West, and acknowledges that most people’s experience of that splendor is fleeting at best. —M.U.

If you go: Linda Hodges Gallery through Dec. 29. (Free)

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- from Crosscut.com "Six things to do in Seattle" Dec. 13, 2008