For David Cass, the ocean gives an limitless supply of surprise at its depths, historical past, bounty, and typically ferocity. Primarily based between the Scottish Borders and Athens, the artist (beforehand) has lengthy been fascinated by the facility of water, particularly its growing vulnerability to the results of the local weather disaster.
On discovered objects like tins and matchboxes to e-book pages and vintage pulleys, Cass repeats motifs of waves and distant marine horizons in oil and gouache. In Mild on Water, his present solo exhibition at The Scottish Gallery, the artist continues to deal with the warming and fast rising of ocean ranges all over the world by means of work that hover between abstraction and illustration.
Whereas creating a lot of the work for the present at his studio in Greece, Cass thought-about the panorama exterior—its islands and peninsulas encompassed by water. He noticed how the rippling floor can remodel its look second by second as a result of climate or time of day. Though “a threat rests behind this mesmeric picture,” he says in a press release. “In this exhibition, light also represents heat.”
Cass attracts consideration to estimates that 91 p.c of Earth’s extra warmth vitality trapped within the local weather system is saved by our oceans. Because the planet continues to heat, this storage functionality disappears, threatening all method of life.
The artist calls on a time earlier than we had been conscious of local weather change, evoking the Industrial Age—by the way, the daybreak of greenhouse gases—in a sequence of oil work titled 500 Years that subtly nod to the Previous Masters.
Mild on Water continues by means of September 28 in Edinburgh. Discover extra on Cass’s web site and Instagram.
