Un sens exceptionnel de l’espace et de la majesté des paysages marquent l’œuvre d’A.R. Allen. De larges scènes se déploient devant nous malgré le format agréablement modeste de ses peintures : ici, de vastes rivières, rivages et mers, vagues fougueuses ; là, des vallées sinueuses, de grandes vues ouvertes au loin sur des collines, des cimes alpines. Brouillards, rafales, neiges et glaces ferment parfois l’horizon - confirmant le plan plat du tableau – la surface devient illusion d’espace. D’apparence postdiluviens, les panoramas d’Allen nous invitent à nous émerveiller devant la nature brute.
Evoquant peut être le style tardif de Turner, l’œuvre d’Allen me rappelle plus encore les excès « gothiques » du grand romantique Victor Hugo, comparable dans ses paysages abstraits au lavis d’encre sur papier tant par leur medium que par la richesse de leurs tonalités sombres. D’autre part, la technique au couteau et les effets abstraits me font aussi penser aux « paysages de mer » peints par Gustave Courbet à Trouville dans les années 1860 ou encore les marines envoutantes, également réalisées au couteau à Ostende vers 1880 par le compatriote d’Allen, l’avant-gardiste James Ensor.
Allen travaille sur panneaux de bois – au lieu de toile ou papier – avec des encres superposées aux acryliques et les sujets minéraux et aquatiques se reflètent dans ces matériaux. La peinture habilement ciselée d’Allen est judicieusement appliquée en couches fines et en voiles quasi translucides, l’obscurité sur la lumière, la lumière sur l’obscurité, touches et teintes se mêlent, se voilent ou se superposent définissant des limites sans ligne. Son couteau souple fait glisser la peinture fraiche, humide, sur la peinture sèche, révélant des crêtes évocatrices, des textures ébouriffées, des ondulations de couleurs saccadées, des éclairs de pigments bruts – des blancs, des ocres, siennes ou ombres – brisent le son étouffé, presque monochromatique de ces terres sauvages, baroques, d’autant plus saisissantes vu l’absence quasi-totale de personnages. Les paysages d’Allen sont de la nature abstraire : les paysages des rêves.
An extraordinary sense of space and grandeur marks A R Allen's stunning landscapes. Vast scenes spread out before us within the pleasingly modest scale of his paintings: here expansive rivers, coasts & seas, crashing surf; there sprawling valleys, yawning vistas open towards distant hills, cliffs, alpine peaks. Fog, squall, snow and ice at times close off distance, reasserting the painted picture plane. Material surface vies for dominance with spatial illusion. Post-apocalyptic in feel, Allen’s paintings invoke a wondrous sense of human awe in the face of raw nature.
Evocative perhaps of late Turner – yet more, for me, Allen’s work recalls the 'gothick' excesses of that great Romantic Victor Hugo, whose abstract ink-wash landscapes on paper are comparable too in choice of medium and rich tonalities. Even more immediately however, Allen’s accomplished knife-painting techniques and abstract effects bring to mind the 1860s Trouville seascapes of Gustave Courbet – as likewise the haunting knifed oil-studies of the sea at Ostend c.1879-82 by Allen’s Belgian compatriot, the radical modernist painter James Ensor.
Allen works on board rather than canvas or paper, in inks layered with acrylics: his mineral and aquatic subjects mirror his art materials. Allen’s deftly knifed paint is judiciously applied in thin skims and skeins, dark over light, light over dark, strokes and tints blending, veiling or overlaying to define edge without line. His supple knife slides wet paint over dry creating evocative ridges, ruffled texture and juddering ripples of colour. Flashes of raw pigment, whites, ochres, Siennas and umbers break the muffled almost monochromatic silence of eerie Baroque wastelands, all the more emotive for their lack of distracting staffage. Allen’s landscapes are nature abstracted: the landscape of dreams.
Anthea Callen
Emeritus Professor of Visual Culture,
University of Nottingham.
Avril 2024
A.R. Allen is a self-taught Belgian painter.
"My Italian grandfather used to help me with my homework. One day, when I was about seven or eight years old, he showed me how to make a winter landscape in a few brush strokes, with three different pots of white paint on a wooden board.
The speed of execution, the simplicity of his gestures for such a successful result, made a strong impression on me."
“Later, while visiting a chapel being renovated, I watched a workman draw a few lines on the stone he was about to restore. It looked like nothing, but when I stood back I saw the face of a saint. It was magic.“
This sense of wonder proved decisive in the decision of Anthony Allen to become an artist.
Most of his paintings are small in scale. They benefit from being seen close up (unlike the work of many other contemporary artists). A first impression tends to group them with landscape.The notion of landscape underlies the work. Yet there is nothing green or growing. If these are landscapes they are entirely mineral. There is surely something else.
I believe that we are looking at an internal conversation, in which certainty is juxtaposed with random, sharp focus with blur, dampness with aridity, chance with precision. Textures are played against each other: granular against fluid, cracked surfaces against smoothness, speed against deliberation. These small meditations are wonderfully crafted, each one of which is illuminated by a particular light from the harshest to the softest.
It is in the nature of painting to draw from elements in art history, to synthesize, and yet retain a personal vision. Too much art history makes the work derivative, and not enough cuts it off from the culture from which it springs. A.R.Allen manages this balancing act to perfection. We can see the ghost of Turner in the romantic mists and effects of light, that of Max Ernst in the use of chance procedures, of Tapies in the sheer physicality of the work, and yet it cannot be reduced to any of these. It is a solitary achievement, intimate and entirely visual.
Oliver Bevan
Saint Quentin la Poterie 2020
Né en 1970, féru d'observer la nature, il développe un mode d’abstraction picturale - techniques mixtes sur panneau -, caractérisée par de vigoureux aplats horizontaux lumineux, rythmés de silhouettes sombres, telles des césures dynamiques.
Comme une page musicale, scandée, œuvrant d'un classicisme ré-interprété du fond/forme perspectif, chaque tableau surgit comme une séquence ininterrompue d'un récit paysager.
Une peinture aux flous inquiets, fascination de rosée et brumes océanes sur des fragments de forces.
Le vent, le ressac... La vague qui vrombit. La tempête qui cesse.
En l'oeuvre d'ALLEN, l’œil peut saisir des sensations aquatiques, minérales, aurorales ou crépusculaires. Le geste du peintre ici est fort, un tempo incisif qui inscrit le regard dans une suite infinie de partitions encore à imaginer.
Pierre Lenain
Bruxelles 2017