Escher (early 20th century) is perhaps the currently best known artist for creating “impossible art”–realistic appearing scenes which involved internal inconsistencies that render them impossible in reality. Another frequent element in Escher’s work involves repeating patterns with a gradient of gradual transformation from one end of the work to the other. Rob Gonsalves (1959-2017) was a Canadian painter Acrylics and oils) who created many visually appealing impossible scenes, mostly in a particular style involving gradient perspectives which make him feel like Escher’s artistic/spiritual successor. There’s no doubt that Gonsalves’ style was heavily influenced by Escher as well as surrealists like Magritte and others.
I’m not interested in parsing definitions–Gonsalves’ work has been labeled magic realism or surrealism–so much as appreciating and enjoying his artwork. Like Escher, most of his works can be categorized into a small number of basic patterns, and within categories the intellectual side of the paintings can actually become boring after looking at a number of them. Within categories, however, the expression of these clever impossibilities varies a great deal, and even within one category there can be several different pictures that I love them.
This is all very abstract and if you haven’t seen his work, it’s probably nothing more than gobbledegook, so I encourage you to look at online collections of his work such as I link to above. As with so many of these artists I love, choosing only one picture to show is difficult , but I will undoubtedly come back to him from time to time. Here’s today’s picture:
Still Waters (1994, acrylic on canvas)
