Justin Boroughs: Light (2012)

Justin Boroughs is a masterful painter of the angled light of morning and afternoon. He paints its presence and marks its absence.

He constructs acutely defined moments of time into exquisitely detailed photorealist works as well as building profound sensations that the viewer - in the act of seeing - is actually placed there and in this way actively participating in its reality.

He possesses a deeply attuned eye for the regionalist dialogues of differing landscapes and buildings. His paintings resonate as much because of the exclusions as inclusions, and in this way his work collectively establishes an idealised rhetoric and visual language. Nothing it seems is out of place, even when fiction.

He uses the implications and statements of human presence as pictorial devices for the viewer’s eye to travel along and about. He contrasts this suggestive human presence directly with the more pervasive, dominant, sense of isolation. His works are ultimately unoccupied (whether rural or urban) yet are redolent of our constant use, be that work or leisure, where we live or want to go.

Boroughs palette is cool. Light is presented as soft and bright; it is placed and defined; its pictorial role is understated but well argued and slightly yellowed.

Ultimately Boroughs paintings are an engaging mix of topographical and architectural accuracy with a surprisingly fluid brushstroke presence (when viewed close up). This modelling and surface rendering augments the overall photorealist approach of his work while declaring also his technical virtuosity to be significantly broader than first seemed.