Thomas Moran

From yesterday's John Martin I've taken stock of what I know of landscape artists and realised Thomas Moran must receive some deserved attention.

His blazing colours and expressive form breathes movement into the earth and freezes the sea, perfectly capturing the elements. Like Martin, he also does seem to enjoy a good craggy cliff-top, and I think we all love a good craggy cliff-top every now and then, and this hits the spot.

I found out about Thomas Moran a while ago through asking some friends of who their favourite artists are, and it's sometime easy to forget in this internet age that your friends can provide some answers the Internet can not.

Then again, the Internet is pretty great too. I now capitalise the Internet because it's my friend too.

Check out this rather inventive website for more stuff HERE

And this site is another good'un too HERE

John Martin

Over the Christmas period I went to see the fantastic John Martin exhibition over at the Tate Britain titled Apocalypse, and some of his paintings truly incurred the feeling of the end. Huge canvases of lush seething colour depicting caverns and cliff-tops and hell and biblical damnations.

Even though the critics derided his work, I think Martin is pretty damn cool. It's high drama. Imagine living in that period and viewing a work like the ever popular Apocalypse (top image); it's horrifying and thrilling at the same time!

Sometimes art doesn't have to subtle or intellectualised or pretentious, it can melodramatic, bombastic, even explosive and that's what John Martin delivers in spades.

You can check out the highly antiquated John Martin website HERE