The Horizons Series - instantaneous paintings of light on the horizon of oceans and lakes.
Alfedena, Chicago, 2007
John Brunetti, Critic/Curator
There has always been an edgy stillness to Whitehouse’s painting —calm lakes and skies often depicted without a clear time of day —that appeared to subliminally reference the nature of film making in which movement is created through a series of still images strung together. He was masterful in his large canvases in creating the impression that something had happened two “frames” before, or was about to happen two “frames” ahead of the composition that was in front of the viewer. This exploitation of a moment has been honed in his new series Horizons in which he examines the dualities of movement and stasis through a series of minimal compositions of sky and water inspired by the Rothko rooms in the National Gallery in Washington, DC. All the works in the Horizons series are plein air canvases and panels that focus on the ever changing relationships of sky light and the reflective surface of the water beneath it that occur on the horizon of great lakes and oceans and Whitehouse paints them directly on site. Each Horizon is composed of two panels - the top of which accounts for a particular sky and the bottom which reflects the sky light mediated through the water below it at a particular moment. The panels are cradled so that while they are exhibited parallel to the wall they appear to float in front of the wall as pure natural light.