Autumn Burn
Whishaw works in a well-established tradition of English landscape painting, in which the landscape itself provides forceful inspiration. His work can be seen as a development of the English Neo-Romantic movement, which is best represented in the Ferens collection by a powerful war painting, Devastation 1941: City, Twisted Girders, by Graham Sutherland (1903-1980). The artist himself says that Autumn Burn is both an abstract and figurative work. It is abstract in its use of autumnal tones and gritty textures to evoke rather than physically describe the landscape. It is figurative because the painting itself is an actual object. The picture has real texture (Whishaw has mixed sand and earth with the paint) and real colour, and can be experienced independently of the landscape that inspired it.
